the CITY in
by
Wilson Tucker
A compelling human story of one man and an army of women!
A COMPLETE SCIENCE FICTION
NOVEL \
GALAXY PUBLISHING CORP
421 HUDSON STREET NEW YORK 14, N.Y.
GALAXY Science Fiction Novels, selected by the editors of GALAXY Science Fiction Magazine, are the choice of science fiction novels both original and reprint.
GALAXY Science Fiction Novel No. 11 35 a copy. Six Novel Subscriptions $2.00
Copyright 1951 by Wilton Tuck
printed by
arrangement with the publisher, RINEHArT CO., INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE GUINN COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK 14, N. Y.
BOOK ONE
T |
HE future of the world is a political
problem, with statesmen and philosophers and plunderers holding sway. But the
far future of the earth is a different thing and firmly in the hands of
dreamers and the sciencefictioneers. The far future
which the sciencefictionist builds is based to a
certain extent on the political near future; probabilities in the one foreshadow
possibilities in the other. Changes are to be expected in both.
Mother Nature first invented chain reaction. Political changes,
geographical changes, evolutionary changes, all are to come. Under the terrific
impetus of a series of explosions—political explosions—the others will follow.
Geographical barriers can arise where none exists
now; genetics and its parent,' biology, can wear new raiment.
The
political future of the world is your lifetime. The sciencefictionist's
far future may be only a few hundred years away or it may be many thousand.
There is no Methuselah around to count the number of their passing.
One
TTE came
down from the low, blue mountains to the west.
From the mountains or somewhere beyond them
where the silence of a vast, unexplored plain posed a perpetual mystery.
Tall,
lean and straight, his body was an incredible brown which contrasted sharply
with the coastal natives in the settlement. The guards in the sentry box
failed to notice that, failed to see him, and he wandered unmolested through
the town. His height, a full foot above the tallest of the natives, and his
brown skin stood out among them, caught and held their wondering gaze but with
the timidity of their kind, they avoided him.
He
was bareheaded, bare chested, and without shoes or
protection of any manner except for the knee length trousers hanging from his
waist. That too set him aside from the people in the settlement, marked him as
different from all the tribes up and down the great seacoast, whether they lived
in towns under the eyes of the soldiery or in the open country.
The
stranger wandered the streets of the settlement, watching the townspeople with
a keen, inquiring interest, staring at their fires and the few tools they
possessed, all the while seemingly fascinated with their mode of living and the
various jobs they were doing. He looked wonderingly at their; pale, white skins
devoid of the sun's coloring, couldn't help noticing the uniformity of their
small stature, and paused occasionally to inspect the highly colored clothing
worn by both sexes—clothing that covered the natives from neck to ankle.
He
was an outsider. They realized that in their first glimpses of him and watched
furtively for the approach of soldiers. He wasn't one of their kind—and yet he was. He was of the same race, the same
blood. They sensed that in the second glance at his body. He was the same, and
yet he was not. The stranger was too tall—none of their kind was ever that
tall— why, he was as tall as the soldiers! His skin was too dark, too bronzed,
the color of copper that was worked in the forge. No one in the world, the
entire length of the coast, wore skin like that.
His
clothing was next to nothing, the cloth of a barbarian; the mountain men who
occasionally came down into the settlement for fire wore more clothing than
that. It was indecent. And yet, it didn't seem to be indecent. On this stranger
the brief garment seemed enough. But the soldiers would have him soon. He
couldn't wander, around the town like that.
The stranger bided his
time.
He
paused at an open market and fingered the fruit displayed there, studying with
his eyes and the pressure of his fingers the ripe yellow bananas from the far
south, a pile of shrunken grapefruit and halfsize oranges. He picked up a
banana, looked his question at the stallkeeper.
He
had no method of payment—that was obvious. The merchant wasn't too sure of the
next move. In quick decision, the stallkeeper shot a hasty glance both ways
along the street, saw no watching soldiery, and waved the stranger on. Smiling,
the outlander picked up the banana and moved on.
He
spent almost two hours in the settlement, ranging it from the field's edge
where he had entered to the wharfs jutting out into the sea, from the small
farms to the north to similar acres on the south. And then he waited. He did
nothing, walked nowhere, spoke not a word. He simply waited for something to
happen.
He had not long to wait.
A security patrol spotted
him.
Two
Doctor Barra sloshed her way across the parade ground and
down the company street to the commandant's office.
The
usual evening rain beat down on her head and shoulders, cascading down the
waterproof garment tightly wrapped around her body to trickle off onto the high
boots she wore. The parade ground was its nightly fine sea of mud, barely holding
its surface and semblance of a parade ground because of a thin layer of crushed
rock spread over the topsoil.
Barra cursed the rain without any real anger
behind the curse. It was always there, every night and morning, and had been
there daily since she came to the colony. It was a part of this strange
country. She had long ago become used to it, to the always present grey clouds
covering the sky from mountaintop to the sea horizon. It was a rare thing when
the sun was observed 'twice in the same month.
The
company street was firmer underfoot and as usual lights burned in the
commandant's office. A doleful sentry stood guard outside.
"Barra." The doctor spoke to the sentry.
The
sentry performed a halfhearted salute and readied past her to open the door.
Barra stepped through the opening and closed the door behind her, stamping
water from the boots. The raincoat was making a puddle on the floor.
"Top of the
evening," she greeted.
A corporal glanced up and
grinned.
Captain
Zee was rummaging through the desk drawers, her glistening hair barely visible
above the surface of the desk. The captain's only answer was a growl. Doctor
Barra pulled off the wet garment and hung it on a wooden peg beside the door;
the heavy boots were "removed to reveal soft sandals. Finally she fished
through her pockets for tobacco.
The captain shot up straight.
"You aren't going to
smoke that pipe in here!"
"I
am," the doctor contradicted. "When you are as old as I am, it's a
comfortable thing."
Zee made an accusing face.
"You've gone native'
, Umm—probably. I've been here several years
longer than you. Wait your turn." She filled the pipe with rough tobacco
and lit it, seating herself across the desk from the commander of the colony's
military post. "I saw some of the export permits the other day. Judging
from the tobacco shipped overseas, half the population of
the homeland have gone native."
Zee growled again.
"It's a filthy habit."
"Perhaps. But someone at home is getting rich."
"That
is none of my affair. I was placed here to operate a military establishment. If
the people at home wish to wallow in mud, that is
their business."
"Speaking
of mud," Barra grinned, "the grounds need another layer of rock. I'd
like to see their faces and hear the comment at home when you requisition
another shipload." She blew a great mouthful of smoke at the low ceiling.
"They bleed this land dry and begrudge every farthing turned back into
it."
Captain Zee stared at the smoke. "I
sometimes wish," she said absently, "that I had chosen another
profession. A politician perhaps, or even a lowly
page at the Queen's court."
"You
and millions of others," Barra answered. "We picked up a stray today.
An outsider."
Zee nodded. "I have
the report here somewhere."
"Have you read it?'
"I glanced at it.
Why?"
"I'd
read it carefully," Barra advised. "This was a man from
outside."
"A
mountain man," the captain shrugged. "Come down to steal food or beg
a fire, most likely."
"No,"
Barra contradicted again. "This one is far different. I said this one was
a man, not one of the weak sisters we have along the coast. This one is neither
a native of the coast nor of the mountains."
The captain and the
corporal stared at her.
"Then where is he
from?"
Barra shrugged and said softly
'I don't know'
The two women held a startled silence,
watching the doctor. The rain beat down on the roof and in the darkness outside
a small body of troops sloshed past, their feet producing a queer, wet slapping
on the company street; In the far distance, near the center of the town, a
bell struck faintly.
Zee
leaned across the desk, her eyes bright with anticipation. "From across the mountains—from the other side?"
"Perhaps. Quite probable."
"By the blessed Isles! I'll have to see this." She turned to the waiting corporal.
"Get him. Under guard." The corporal saluted
and snatched up a raincoat to plunge through the doorway.
The
captain rummaged through the paper on her desk, unsuccessfully seeking the
report turned in by the security patrol. "What is he like?" she shot
at the doctor.
"Tall,"
Barra said, and watched the captain. "Taller even than
you."
The jolt was reflected on
Zee's face. "Than I?"
Barra
nodded. "By two inches. I told you he was a man.
Six and two, by my measurements, and I measured twice to be sure. Weighs a
hundred and eighty and has muscles like . . . like . . .well."
She spread her hands. "I don't doubt but what he could handle any five of
your troopers;"
"By the blessed Isles!" The captain searched frantically among the
papers strewn over the desk. "How did we capture him? Did he put up a
fight?"
The
doctor grinned at her. “He did not. The patrol simply
walked up to him and said Here now, come along And he came. He doesn't
understand the mother tongue, doesn't speak a word from what I've been able to
determine, but he came along as peacefully as a sheep. Almost
as if he were waiting for them."
"An outsider!" Zee repeated in exhilaration. "From over the mountains." She gave up the search
for the report. "For eight long years I've lived in this sinkhole, eight boring
years of rain and mud. My skin has turned white, and I've lost my ambition.
Eight years of lazy, sloppy natives and export quotas to meet eight years of begging supplies and extras from home. I've swum in the
sea and climbed the nearer mountains, I've taken bananas from the trees on the
southern peninsula, and I've made ice rocks from the winter snows in the north.
And for eight years I've wondered what lay beyond the mountains!
"My predecessor before
me, rest her soul, wondered what was beyond the mountains and never
found out. And now, after eight years, I'm going to find out!"
"Perhaps," Barra
said.
"And
the meaning of that?"
"I've just told you
the man can't talk."
"Shamming."
Barra smiled, disarmingly. "There is
another way." "And that is?"
"We have a guide. Send
out an exploring party."
Zee fell back in her chair at the audacity of
the suggestion. She opened her red lips to curse the doctor for a fool and then
closed them again, the words unspoken. The spark of desire flamed within her
momentarily, to be beaten down by training and caution.
"That. .... that is foolhardy," she said finally.
"Zee, look at the map' Doctor Barra
turned in her chair and pointed to the wall."Look at it: a long slice of
unknown territory stretching from the snow country to the tropical peninsula. Less than two thousand miles from tip to tip, the Grown Colony of
Western Somerset. Two thousand miles—" She jumped from her chair
and approached the map, to jab a finger at the northern end.
"Here there is nothing profitable, here
a few squalid natives live off the land in the summer and freeze or starve to
death in the winter. And down here it is slightly profitable; here we work
metals for export, raise grain. And here we grow apples and grapes, and here
tobacco, here cotton, and finally in the far south, fruit such as never grew in
the Home Isles. Zee, 'that is the length of this land, and we know it all. How
much do we know of its breadth?"
Barra ran her finger from seacoast to
mountain range. "We know this, a paltry few hundred miles. Think of that,
Zee, only a few hundred miles and the mountains stop us. And what is beyond the
mountains? What does the map show? A great, white empty space labeled
'uncharted.' Zee, don't you see the possibilities?"
"I see a great, white
empty space."
"But it isn't like that at all! Recall
your history Zee. Remember the maps of a hundred years or so ago. What were
they like? There were the Isles and a narrow channel separating us from the
Big Continent, across the channel were colonies of the crown, and behind the
colonies, what? More great, empty spaces marked 'uncharted.' All of the Big
Continent uncharted, Zee, and the job isn't completed
yet! Remember what the exploring parties found there, remember the untold
wealth and food they discovered arid are still discovering. Look at the map of
the known world today for your answer . . . The Isles are there, the channel is
there, the colonies are there, but behind the colonies where uncharted spaces
used to exist, whole countries are mapped and open today. That's your answer,
Zee"
"The Big Continent and
Western Somerset are different."
"But only in one
respect—there was no mountain range be
hind the channel colonies nothing to stop the exploring parties
but the ambition to push. Here, we have the mountains. Be
yond the mountains lie great plains—the natives have
spoken
of the land often."
"The natives also speak," the
captain reminded her, "of barbarians who play with lightning and wild men
who eat flesh."
"Silly superstition! What do these coastal people know of the interior? They've never
crossed the mountains. Before today they had never seen a man from out there.
They concoct stories to frighten the young and amuse the old."
"Perhaps, Barra, perhaps. But what makes you think a paradise exists
out there?"
Barra
shook her head impatiently. "I don't believe it to be a paradise. I'm only
suggesting the possibilities of what may be there, as compared to what we found
in the 'uncharted spaces' of the Big Continent. Haven't you a drop of gambling
blood in your veins, Zee?"
"No."
"Zee,
I'm a doctor, I've studied the human body for more years than I care to
remember. The security patrol brought the stray to me today, following
procedure. I examined this man from the crown of his hair to the nails on his
toes. He's a man,
Zee, the likes of which you and I have never seen.
His body is healthy, solid, vital. No—I'm not saying a
paradise exists on the other side of the mountains, but I am saying there is a land far healthier, far better than this climate we
live in. Wait until you see him, see the power in his
body. You don't grow bodies like that in blank spaces."
"Doctor, you're acting strangely. I've
never heard you talk like this before." Zee stared at the older woman.
"I
have a right to act strangely—I'm fired with a sudden ambition, Zee. I want to
see what lies on the other side of the fountains!"
A
silence fell. Barra smoked her pipe and blew smoke at
the ceiling. The captain listened to the rain on the roof and watched the slate
colored smoke curl upward. She seemed not to notice the odor of the tobacco.
Outside there was only the occasional passing of a sentry walking her beat.
Zee's
eyes wandered to the map. The Crown Colony of Western Somerset stretched from
north to south like a great quartermoon, with the
depths of the ocean on the one side and the mountains on the other. To the
north the frozen country stretched out to meet the mountains and beyond that
was—"uncharted." No one had ever been into the far north, no one knew
what lay there and few cared. To the south the land narrowed down to a thin
peninsula where tropical fruit grew, and west of the peninsula the mountains
came down to meet the sea. Beyond the mountains and the sea?
"Uncharted."
One
thousand, four hundred and sixty two miles from northern blank space to
southern tip: she knew, she patrolled it, had patrolled it for eight years.
Eight years ago Captain Zee had won her bars, paid a farewell visit to Her
Majesty the Queen, and sailed westward from the Home Isles to the colony of
Western Somerset. She had been fired with duty and ambition then, before she
sighted the colony, before she saw the everlasting cloud blanket that filled
the sky, before her tanned skin had lost its color and turned pale.
The sea was rough for swimming, the mountains
hard to climb, there was little else to do but range the coast—one thousand,
four hundred and sixtytwo miles of it. She covered
it, periodically, at first because she wanted to and finally because
regulations required it. She watched the natives packing fruit in the south,
picking tobacco and cotton, harvesting grain, working metals, growing apples
and grapes. And she saw to it that the larger portions were duly shipped home
to the Isles, on schedule.
She policed the native population—although
little policing they needed, weak, mild people that they were and kept a
constant check on the morale, health and fitness of her troops. That was the
extent of her duties because there was nothing else to do. Up and down, up and
down. A few hundred miles wide between the mountains and the
sea, and up and down. Her eyes came to rest on the coloration which indicated a mountain range. What might be on the other
side?
There
had been no talk of it at home. With several thousand other women she had
signed up for military service, and from that point on the military was her
life, her soul. She hadn't even considered marrying, putting that Vague possibility off into the dim, distant future—if ever, when retirement
came. The men of the Isles were little better, just a shade better, than the
native males she policed. They were a few inches taller, and naturally tanner
than the colony natives. They were more intelligent, of course, personable
enough, skillful at certain trades. But she had no Use for them at the present time.
The doctor had put a strange emphasis on the man.
Again her eyes swung to the map, and the
uncharted blankness beyond the mountains.
"He offered no trouble?" she asked suddenly.
Barra shook her head. "None."
"Good physical specimen?"
"Perfect. I wish I had his teeth! He is
a meat eater, to judge by those teeth. And I'm willing to gamble he doesn't
know the meaning of sinus or indigestion or hardening of the arteries. Oh what a body!"
Captain
Zee glanced at her with speculation. "Are you getting
homesick?"
"Me?"
The doctor was indignant. "I can go back
whenever I wish."
"I'm wondering if you've waited too long," Zee said dryly. "You hear my profession speaking,"
Barra declared with injured innocence. "Not my heart."
"
I
hope so. The outlander won't talk?"
"Can't,"
Barra corrected. "Doesn't understand the language.
Would you know his?"
"Why did he come down
to the settlement ?"
"I don't know. The natives told your
patrol he was merely walking around, looking. Sightseeing, as
it were." «, Zee narrowed her eyes. "Spying?"
"For
what?
And whom?"
She
couldn't answer that. "I wish I knew why he came in. If he is the physical
specimen you describe, he is out of place here and surely intelligent enough to
realize it. The mountain men never stay—they aren't able to live under these
conditions. This man should feel the same."....
"As
yet," the doctor pointed out, "he hasn't been able to do anything
else. Remember that he came down to look and was picked up immediately. By this
time he is probably wanting to go back." She
puffed on the pipe, and slowly added, "I know I would."
Captain
Zee shot her a glance of suspicion and parted her lips to speak. The words were
stopped. There came a brief rap on the door and it was pushed open by the
returning corporal, water dripping off her raincoat. She came in, followed by
two guards and the outlander.
The
corporal saluted. "The stray, Captain." And she. stepped aside to struggle
out of the wet coat.
Captain Zee stared at the
man, mouth hanging open.
"Barra! By the saints, he's naked!"
"Not
quite," Barra chuckled. "The fellow is wearing breeches, of a
sort!"
"But
this is indecent!" "He doesn't seem to mind."
Three
THE captain
slowly moved from behind her desk and ad
vanced across the room, to stare incredulously at the
man.
Doctor Barra watched her, watched the play of emotions on
the woman's face. She thought she recognized what she read
there. Zee paused an arm's length from the man.
"Barra, he's so tail."
"They probably grow
them that way, across the mountains."
"And
look at that tan! I haven't seen so deep a tan since— I've never seen
anyone so brown."
"The sun shines over
there, too. All the time."
Captain
Zee finally looked at the man's eyes, looked into them.
The double shocks followed one another so quickly they were almost one. He didn't
drop his gaze nor draw away from her like the natives along the coast; he held
her eyes, seeking and compelling her continued attention. And he shocked her
with the intense something—force, life or whatever unknown electrical thing it
was that lurked behind the eyes. He stared back at her, calm, insolent and yet attentive.
What
were the words Barra had used when describing him ? She
had said the man was healthy and—vital. That was it, vitality. Standing in the
office, quiet
and unmoving,
all the pent-up vitality in his body was concentrated in his eyes, lurking
behind his eyes like the irresistible power of a magnet, drawing her into
them. There was Something else there, too, something
she couldn't immediately recognize, something that didn't belong in a man.
There
was an expression in his eyes that was similar to some other thing, something
long ago arid far away.
He
blinked, and she took a step backward. Aware of herself,
the focus of examination broadened and she saw that his near naked body was wet. She turned on the corporal.
"Why didn't you
provide him with a coat?"
"I tried, Captain. He refused to wear
it, Captain." "He refused?"
"Yes, Captain. Those on duty at the
guardhouse tell me he refuses to wear any of the clothing offered him,
Captain."
Barra broke in. "He likes it that way,
Zee. That's the way they picked him up and that way he has remained. I don't
think he needs clothing."
"But that's madness.
He'll catch pneumonia."
The
doctor switched her gaze to the man. "I doubt," she stated, "if
he will stay around $hat long."
"He
will stay until I release him," Zee snapped.
Barra
didn't reply. She kept her attention on the man.
There was silence. t
Finally
Zee asked, "Has he eaten?"
"Only
some southern fruit, Captain. Nothing else."
"Well,
we're making some headway, however small. That indicates, Doctor,
that either he is familiar with the fruit and will readily eat it, or
that it is entirely foreign to him and he must sample it."
"Obviously,"
Barra commented. "One or the other."
The
captain frowned. What had seemed brilliant logic only a moment ago now sounded
hollow. Was the doctor being deliberately deflationary? Well, what was she going to do with the fellow? If he remained in the settlement—or
anywhere along the coast for that matter, he would have to wear more clothes.
And if he refused to do so, she would have to send him back to the mountains.
Or keep him continually in the guardhouse.
Doctor
Barra, apparently reading her mind, said, "I think he'd make an excellent
guide."
She arose from her chair and went to the wall
map, taking it down from its peg. The outlander was following her movements.
Propping the map up on the desk at an angle and holding it there with one hand,
Barra pointed to a small spot
on
the map which represented the settlement. She had his attention. With her
finger, she indicated the coastal town and then pointed to herself. The man
waited.
Then Barra held out an empty hand toward him,
inviting him to identify himself with the map.
Unhesitatingly, he stepped closer to the map,
placed his palm flatly on the mountain ridge a few hundred miles away, and
swept his hand westward across the uncharted spaces. He moved his hand all the
way west until it reached the wooden molding at the edge of the map.
"That is news," said Doctor Barra.
"It is, Doctor? We've learned only what
we've already suspected. That he lives somewhere over the mountains."
"We've also learned," the doctor
pointed out, "that he can read maps. Tell me, Zee, when was the last time
you saw a native reading a map?"
Zee turned to study the man. She almost made
the identification she had been searching for, almost recognized that peculiar
thing it was she had seen in his eyes.
Doctor Barra leaned over the desk to pick up
a stylus. With it, and still holding the attention of the stranger, she made a
few tentative marks on the map to show him the proper use of the instrument,
and then handed it to him. He accepted it between thumb and forefinger,
delighting her and inwardly confirming another notion she had been holding.
He paused before the map and then brought the
point of the stylus down onto the sea, an inch or so to the eastward of the
coastline. Rapidly, he sketched in a new coast, beginning very near the present
northern tip of the snow country and running the line southward through the sea
to the peninsula. When he reached the peninsula he hesitated only a moment, and
then drew in a larger, fatter one than the land that now existed.
"And that is supposed to be what?"
the captain asked with slight sarcasm.
Barra shook her head. "I don't know. But
I'm willing to wager he does." She pointed to the, uncharted area west of
the mountains and tapped it to emphasize his attention. And again she indicated
him.
He waited a moment, studying the broad, white
expanse, and then beginning at the far western edge of the map, midway down
the middle, sketched in a large body of water. The water was fairly small where
he began but as he. guided the stylus southward the
shores broadened out to become a large sea which flowed to the bottom of the
map and merged with the sea already imprinted there. It lapped the mountains
just west of the peninsula.
"A sea? Another sea? Is he
trying to tell us we are on an
island, Barra?"
"More likely, a continent. Study that, will you? If that sea extends
all the way up into the middle interior of the country, it will be our great
fortune. Do you realize that, Zee? Our ships can sail around the peninsula,
past the mountain range, and northward again into the very interior! A great inland sea!"
The
man stepped closer to the map and examined the small star which indicated the
settlement. Then he very carefully drew another star on the northern shore of
his new sea.
"By
the blessed Isles! A city, Barra, A city—out there."
The
doctor tapped the new city with a fingernail and then directed it at him,
asking a question.
Once
more the man spread the flat of his hand on themap,
beginning at the mountains and sweeping over the entire western area.
"Call
him a traveler for want of a better term," the doctor suggested.
"Apparently he just roams around." She thought to glance at his feet
professionally. "And he has covered plenty of ground—barefoot." She
glanced up at the man's face, found his eyes on hers, and almost smiled at him.
He
handed her the stylus and stepped away from the map to fold his arms.
"Cheeky devil,"
Captain Zee said. "What's his name?"
The doctor stared at her. "How would I
know?"
"He must have some identification."
"He's wearing it—just what you see and
no more. But I call him Twoeightyfour." "Two . Why?"
"Case number. He is the two hundred and eightyfourth stray
the patrol has brought to me. Twenty some odd years ago I was excited with my
first one. That first one had a mouth infection; and I haven't been excited
since. Not until Twoeightyfour came along."
"I know what you're going to say
next—he's perfect."
"Glad you agree with me," Barra
said pleasantly.
The corporal was grinning.
"Take him back!" Zee snapped to the
guards.
The guards stepped to either side of the man.
Unbidden and as though he had understood the order, he turned about to face the
exit. The guards faced about and one of them reached out for the latch. Zee stared
at his back, astonished.
"Wait!" she commanded, and stepped
closer to him. "Barra, come here. Look at this scar."
"I've looked at it. You'll find it in my
import."
The captain leaned closer. "Not an
arrow, or a spear—Barra, this scar was not made with a blade."
"I know it."
"What kind of a weapon
did cause it?"
"That," the doctor confessed,
"I don't know." She glanced again at the scar that had puzzled her
since the man first came to her attention. "If I knew what caused that
scar, I could tell you a lot of what lies on the other side of the
mountains."
Captain
Zee sat behind her desk, rubbing the tips of her fingers across tired eyes.
Under the closed eyelids there still persisted the images of the man and guards
going out the door—the guards hunched in their coats to protect them from the
rain, and the man with the water running down his bronzed back, running across
the scar.
"Barra," she said
finally, "do you believe that?"
"Believe what?"
The pipe was going again.
"That
an inland sea exists on the other side of the mountains. And
that there is a city there?"
"Yes . . ." She
pulled on the pipe. "Yes, I think I do."
"But
what kind of a city? Who built it? Who lives thereT
Barra shrugged. "What was the meaning of
the coastline
he drew a hundred miles at sea? I don't know. I'd like to find
out." She glanced at the map. "Perhaps his people built the
city, or his ancestors. After all, this country could be hun
dreds—Now that is silly.
This country could be many thou
sands of years old, Zee. It could have been here since the
world began or it could have risen from the sea only a half
million years ago. The one thing we should always keep in
mind is that we are
new here. We've been here only half a
century. And what is fifty
years to one like him who has been
here . . . how long?"
"Why haven't we made
contact before this?"
"How do we know that we haven't?"
the doctor asked pointedly.
Zee stared at her. "Do
you think . .
"Again,
I don't know. This is the only one we've picked upt
but it isn't necessarily the only one Who has stood in
the hills and watched us."
"I've thought of that angle, at least.
And I'm worried about the scar. About some strange weapon we know nothing
of."
"I'll
admit that is the problem. A problem that has never
confronted us before. History is my weakness—I studied it continually,
and in all our exploratory operations on the Big Continent, we've never been
bested in weapons. But I suppose you know that, too. Occasionally we find a people
with a bow as strong, a knife as true, but we've never found anyone who could
outshoot or outfight our troops." She blew a great gust of smoke at the
ceiling. "And it infuriates me that I cannot identify the cause of that
scar. It's an insult to my profession."
"It
will be a greater insult to mine if I allow the unknown to exist," Zee
said dryly.
"Good! You are
thinking of going?"
"Barra, I can't help myself. As long as
we lived in comparative ignorance, I could charge up and down the coast as
freely as I wished and be content. The known was known, and under complete
control. We were the masters here. But now what has happened—a stray appears, a stray of the type we've never seen before. And he
carries a scar made by a weapon we've never dreamed of before. Barra, that
poses a problem that cannot go unexplored. For our own safety we have to find
what—and who—is out there."
"Twoeightyfour,"
Barra said for no reason.
Zee
stared at the closed door. "He has the strangest eyes .. •
I saw something in them . . ."
Barra glanced at her.
"I wish I could say just what it was in
his eyes . . ." "He's a meat eater," the doctor told her.
"You're apt to see most anything in his eyes."
"It
still startles me that he's so tall." "Six and two.
Measured twice."
"Stubborn, and insolent, too. Did you notice that? He has never lived
under authority."
"He travels," Barra repeated.
"Just travels around."
"Barra . • The
captain turned as a new thought struck her. "How old would you say he
was?"
Barra removed the pipe from her mouth.
"I wish you'd find that report and read it. I don't know."
"No,
I mean how old would you estimate? After a thorough physical examination you
should be able to estimate his age. What estimate did you make?"
Barra shook her head. "None whatsoever."
"None
at all?
Surely now"
"Surely, nothing! Nothing is sure where he is concerned. Zee. for the Queen's sake, find
that confounded report and study it. That man threw me for an absolute and
total loss. I can't tell you how old he is, I can't estimate how old he is. His
physical properties simply defy estimation, and that is all there is to it." . 4
Zee stared at her. "As strange as all
that? Barra, tell me . . ." She paused and studied the doctor.
"Barra, how old did you guess he
was?"
"You want me to tell
you that?"
Zee
nodded. "1 know
you fairly well, Doctor. I know that behind all the talk about professional
pride and ethics there is a method. I know that if you can't do a thing one
way, you'll do it another if only to satisfy your vanity. And if you've been
unable to arrive at a medically acceptable estimation, you've made a layman's
guess to satisfy yourself. I want to know . what you guessed."
"You won't like it, I
warn you."
"What did you guess?
How old do you think he is?"
Barra put her pipe down on the desk.
"Somewhere," she said slowly, "between one and two hundred years
of age."
Captain
Zee stared at her, incredulous, and then pushed back in the chair. "That's
fantastic!"
"I said you wouldn't
like it."
"Oh, but Barra, that's too incredible . .
"Of course it is. Like his height, his
build, his ability to read maps. Of course it's fantastic. So place him at
about your own age if it will make you happy. But I'll keep my guess. One hundred plus."
"No one lives to be
that old."
"No one of our race. Zee, when I examined the man I discovered his arm had been broken some
time ago. That was my first clue. The bones were expertly set and nicely
healed; what startled me was that the bone had been broken about seventyfive
years ago." She retrieved the pipe and tapped ashes on the floor.
"You still don't see the fascinating aspect: If he is less than two
hundred now, and in ripe manhood, what is old age?"
"But if we accepted
that, he could ... he could . .
."
Barra
finished it for her. "He could live to be five hundred. Or
a thousand. Who knows?" She stuffed the pipe in a pocket and arose
from the chair. "Please find that report and read it thoroughly. I'm going
to bed—it's late." She paused near the door to struggle into the still wet
coat. The captain was staring thoughtfully at nothing on the wall.
"And
in the event," Barra said in high humor, "that a notion or two
strikes you later, just remember that he is a man • . .
all man." She opened the door and went out.
Zee stared after her
blankly.
After
a while she stood up to walk around the office. She paused before the map and
studied the western sea that had been sketched in, turned her attention to the mysterious
coastline that didn't exist, and came back again to the tiny new star
signifying a strange city. Abruptly she realized that distances were not
evaluated—there was not the slightest indication of how far away that sea and
that city might be. It wasn't near: he had left a large blank space just beyond
the mountains. But it could be hundreds or thousands of miles beyond them. An
expeditionary force would have to tackle it blindly, not knowing the length of
the journey.
It
would have to live off the land, it would have to be self sufficient, it would have to carry a minimum of baggage. Not more than a
few wagons could be spared. Troops ? She studied the
map of Western Somerset.
It wouldn't be wise to take
them all from the same sector.
A
few from the north who were due for a warmer climate, a few from along the coastal
villages where the populace would not miss them, and a few from the peninsula .
. . those would be the best for they would be used to the heat. The sun shone
across the mountains all the time. He had a magnificent tan. Not even at home,
in the Isles, did anyone acquire a tan like that. Not many women were taller
than she, and no men. There had never been a man who reached her eyes.
Eyes.
Abruptly
she pulled her coat down from the peg and threw it around her shoulders. The
startled sentry outside the door snapped a hasty salute as she sped pa it.
Running down the company street, Zee belatedly realized what she was doing and
slowed her body down to a fast walk. Covering the ground at a rapid pace, she
came to the end of the street and the doctor's cabin. Zee absently noted a
light in the window and rapped on the door.
Barra called an invitation
from within.
Zee pushed the door open,
stood there.
"Barra, I've
remembered what it was."
"Remembered
what?"
"That look in his eyes. I recognize it now." "Oh that."
"It's intelligence, Barra. That man
possesses real intelligence."
"Zee— why don't you read my report? I said that,"
Four
SHE
rolled over on the bed. sat up in the grey light of
an" other day and thought of the prisoner. And then she wondered why her
first thought had been of him?
Once
or twice while she breakfasted at the officers' table, set at the far end of
the long mess hall, she looked up at the troops in the room. They were keyed
up. She noted, too, that certain of the officers at the table with her
reflected the same new strangeness. She became aware that many eyes were
watching her while her head was averted. Afterwards, on the way along the
company street to the office, she suddenly guessed the reason for it all.
The
grapevine had already passed along the news. An expedition was going over the
mountains.
. Zee bit her lip and mentally cursed the corporal
on duty in the office—no, it couldn't be the girl. She hadn't been there, and
even if she had, she wouldn't have been able to read the captain's thoughts. Doctor Barra then? Had the old fool unloosened her tongue?
Or had the troops merely guessed it with some semi-reliable sixth sense?
She entered the office to find it
scrupulously clean, her papers correctly filed and neatly stacked, with the
missing report of the stray placed atop the pile. The suddenly busy corporal
was studiously laboring over her reports, reports that had never needed nor
received so much attention before. Zee spoke her usual good morning and sat
down, half amused. The corporal wanted to scale the mountains, too.
"Avon,"
she said, "bring me the personnel files. I will need picked troops."
"Yes,
Captain," The corporal bounded across the room to the files.
"And send in the
supply officer and the transport sergeant.
Oh, yes—if you should see Doctor Barra, ask
her to come around when she's not busy." "Yes, Captain!"
Zee
stared at the door as it swung shut behind the fast moving corporal.
"Twoeightyfour,"
she mused aloud, "the things you are doing to my command." Absently
her eyes swung to the wall map and its new additions. As an afterthought, she
added, "And the things you are doing to me."
The transport sergeant leaned back against
the wheel of a wTagon and grinned.
"Three,
only three, she said. D'ya know what that means, you chickens? Only three
wagons! We're traveling light, fast and far. We're going to sleep on the ground
and knock down our food when we find "it. We're taking along just enough
to hold us during an emergency, and the rest we have to hunt. We're taking only
two tanks of "water: when we run dry, we drink out of the river. What d'ya
think of that? There'll be no tenderfeet chickens on
this trip!"
The
sergeant, a hefty middle aged woman, was obviously enjoying herself.
"Three
wagons?" someone repeated in the crowd around her. "What about the
engines? How about making charcoal out there in the jungle?"
"Engines—the
Queen's grandmother. There'll be no charcoal burners on this trip. I told you we was traveling light and
fast. We won't have time to stop to make charcoal every night. Three of my best
teams, that's what she said, three teams and a fourth
for a spare. And besides," the sergeant added contemptuously, "it
won't be a jungle out there. It's plain, ordinary ground like you're walking
on. I saw it on the map. And there's another big sea over on the other side of
it. We're heading for the sea."
"When do we start. Sergeant?"
"We? Where do you get that we.. .. are you carrying one? I'm taking five—and
five more. No more then two hostlers to each wagon,
that's the orders. The toughest I've got— women who can nurse a horse all night
and fight all day, if we have to. I don't want no
chickens!"
The
supply officer was openly lacking in enthusiasm. She sat on the edge of her
bunk and brushed her hair, looking at it in a small hand mirror. Her roommate
watched her.
"I'd
just as soon remain right here," the supply officer said again. "I
haven't the slightest interest in what may be on the other side of those
mountains. Barbarians by the hundreds, I dare say. Dirty
people. And can you guess what she expects us to do? Live off the land!
You know what that means cleaning and cooking a wild animal of some sort every
day, if the troops are lucky enough to bring one down. Dirty way to live."
"Donnie," her roommate said
suddenly, "I don't want you to go.
Donnie
smiled at her. "Don't worry about it, chick. I'm not going—not as long as
I have my wits about me. The night before we're scheduled to leave you are
going to. report me to the doctor."
"Oh, Donnie, please
don't go!"
"Don't get excited, I'm not. You should have been there. She's taking three wagons. Can you imagine
that, only three? Food and water in one, bedrolls in the
second and weapons in the third. Doesn't that sound revolting? Not a
single item of luxury, not a stitch of personal belongings except what can be
carried on the back. Dirty way to travel. Expects everyone to sleep on the ground at night. The entire
troop will be barbarians in a week's time."
"Donnie, if you don't
go, who will?"
The supply officer
shrugged. "I don't know, and I'm ready to admit I don't care. That's her
worry and she is welcome to it—imagine any intelligent
person believing in some wild story told by a barbarian! A sea and a city,
indeed! I'm going to make it a point to stop by and look at the stray. I want
to see what it is that can cause the captain to lose her senses. A dirty
specimen, like as not. They say he was naked when they arrested him."
"Donnie—please make sure."
The officer arose from the bunk and crossed
the room, to kiss the girl tenderly first on the tip of her ear and then her
lips. "Stop worrying about it, chick. I'm staying right here with you.
There isn't anything over the mountains to lead me away from you."
Doctor Barra was running when she reached the
door to the commandant's office. The sentry quickly opened it and the doctor
tumbled through.
"Vinegar," she half shouted, "tons
of it. All the vinegar in the village!"
Zee looked up from the
desk, annoyed.
"What are you talking
about? And please be calm."
"I'm
talking about vinegar—I want vinegar, all the vinegar within miles of here.
Requisition every ounce you can find." Barra shut the door behind her and
nodded to the grinning corporal. "Morning. Yes,
vinegar. Do you know what I lack in medical supplies? Sunburn ointment. In the
name of the Queen, who would ever have dreamed of needing burn ointment out
here? I haven't so much as an ounce. So we will need vinegar, all the vinegar
we can find. The sun shines hotly out there, all the time, night and day for
all I know. Consider the tan he has!"
"I
didn't think of that," Zee admitted, pushing back her chair. She ran the
tips of her fingers across her forehead. "This expedition is causing more
difficulties than I thought possible.
I have two hundred troops who all want to go,
and a supply officer who doesn't." She studied the doctor, worried.
"Will vinegar be sufficient? Will it protect the skin from the sun? On
these troops, constant sun would be punishing."
"If we can find enough of it,"
Barra told her, "forget your worries and leave it to me. It will call for
special precautions for several days—keep well covered and smear on lots of
vinegar. The tannic acid in the fluid does the job. But after perhaps a week
the sun won't bother us." She stopped suddenly, and looked anxiously at
Zee. "We will be out as much as a week, don't you think?"
"Yes,"
Zee told her dryly, "we'll be out a week. And perhaps a
month after that."
"Ummm,"
Barra closed her eyes and sat down in her favorite chair. 'My arms first, of
course, and then I think my legs. My face and neck will take care of
themselves."
The captain looked askance. ,
"The tan, Zee, the most beautiful tan this side of the Home Isles. And after a while—if I had the nerve—I'd
wear nothing more than breeches, like the outlander."
"Barra!"
"I haven't the nerve," the doctor
assured her, with a wink across the room at the corporal. "I should hope
not."
"What's
this about the supply officer not wanting to go? Lieutenant Donn? Who would be
fool enough to turn down an opportunity like this?"
"Yes,
Donn," The captain stood up and crossed the room, to pause before the map.
"I think... I think it is
cowardice, Barra. It pains me to put it in words, but there it is. Not that
Donn has said anything—she's too fine a soldier for that. She hasn't objected,
and she hasn't refused to go—in words. It was in her manner after I outlined
the needs for the trip. She guessed at once I was planning to include her in
the expedition, and her attitude changed immediately. For some strong reason
she wants to stay behind, and I can only suppose it's
cowardice."
Barra looked up to find the corporal's eyes
on hers. They studied each other silently, for seconds, and then broke their
glances, each convinced the other knew her thoughts.
"I can fix that,"
Barra said.
"How?"
"Soldiers are all alike—the day before
you plan to leave,
she'll fall back on the old illness dodge. That puts Lieutenant
Donn in my department." The doctor grinned wickedly. "I'll
prescribe a long vacation, exercise and plenty of sunshine."
Very briefly she locked eyes with the corporal. "It cures them
every time."
"I
don't know," Zee told her. "It has occurred to me that this trip can
be extremely dangerous. I'm taking a wagonload of weapons. And it wouldn't be
wise to take along anyone who couldn't be relied upon."
Barra shrugged and changed
the subject.
"I looked in on
Twoeightyfour this morning. Man"
"Did he eat anything?" Zee asked quickly.
"Some fruit."
The
captain shook her head. "We can't move for at least a week. He'll starve
before then. Confound it, what's the matter with him?"
"If
you think he's pining away in durance vile, forget it; he isn't. He seems
perfectly content to wait." She looked up and caught the captain's attention.
"That's what he's doing you know—waiting.''
"Waiting .. .for ... ?"
Doctor
Barra nodded. "Waiting for us to start westward. I sense it when I study him, and despite that I'm not afraid. I'm just as
eager to get moving as he is."
"You
said something last night," the captain reminded her, something
like..." She hesitated and tried to recall the words.Ah!
When the security patrol picked him up, you said he acted as though he were
waiting for them."
"Ummm. Yes, he was doing that, too,"
Captain
Zee paced the floor. "Barra, you're not of the military
; you haven't been trained to think in the military manner. I have. I
think a problem through forward and backward before advancing; I examine the
risk and then the probable value of my move. And let me tell you, I lay awake
half the night puzzling over this stranger, this Twoeightyfour of yours."
She paused before the doctor to stare down at her. "And give him a name,
Barra. By the saints, we can't call him by a number forever."
'"I'll think up a fine
one," the doctor promised.
"The
thought uppermost in my mind," Zee continued, "is that this entire
episode may be a trap. A stray ... a
man comes ii't from the outside where we never knew people existed before. We never
knew people like him existed. He comes into the settlement, he looks around, he waits. He is picked up and put into protective custody.
He continues to wait. He is brought into this office and adds something to a
map, a tantalizing something we never knew existed before. And still he
continues to wait. He is confident we will go out to examine that something he
has added to the map. That is why he is so content to wait, Barra. And that is
why I suspect this may be a trap."
"Oh,
that," the doctor waved cheerfully. "I've thought of that. But we'll
never know until too late, will we?"
"Not
if I can help it!" Zee hit the desk top. "We will march in full
battle dress and on the offensive. My best scouts will walk point, and the
dirtiest infighters I have will protect our flanks and bring up the rear."
She paused again beside the doctor's chair. "And one
other thing. Your precious Twoeightyfour will be under constant
observation. Every trooper will have orders to put a barb through his neck at
the first sign of trouble."
"Oh;
now, Zee!"
"I mean that, Doctor. I will not have a
traitor in my ranks, and if that man guides us into a trap, he is a
traitor."
"Zee, you're being too hasty. Give him a
chance to prove his mettle at least. If we should be attacked, wait and see which side he fights oh before carrying out such an
order. After all, Zee, there may be things out there which are his enemies,
too."
"He'll have his
chance," Zee snapped. "One."
She
stopped her pacing beside the corporal's desk, reached down to pick up a lif lying there. "What have I left out, Doctor? Axle
grease, ammonia, compass, coals—I am taking teams, not
the charcoal engines—food and water, medical supplies, mapmaking supplies,
poison vals." She directed another remark to
the listening doctor. "I'm going to equip the troops with poisoned
arrows—in case."
Barra nodded. "But
fake along the other kind, too. I don't care to eat meat brought down by
poisoned tips." She studied the ceiling thoughtfully. "Salt.
And citrus fruit."
"Salt,
yes. But I don't know about the fruit? It will be difficult to keep.'
"You're
putting water tanks in the wagons? We can wash the fruit and store it in the
tanks. It'll keep for a while. The water will taste, but I don't mind."
Zee
eyed the doctor. "You don't mind. I'm glad of that, Doctor. I haven't yet
said you were going."
Barra shot up in her chair.
""Try
and stop me—just try it. And the woman you leave in charge here will have to
report a desertion in the next mail home." She fished around in a pocket tot her pipe. "I'm going out there, Zee. Put it down under the heading
of medical research. I want to find out how to live to be a hundred."
A
hundred Zee stood looking out the window onto the company street. The man was a
hundred or more if one could place any belief at all in the doctor's opinions. Tall, so astonishingly tall, with intelligence in his eyes.
He roved the countryside out there somewhere in
nothing but breeches, he traveled barefoot, be ate meat, he bore a puzzling scar
on his back, and he was so admirably tanned. And perhaps he was a hundred or
more years old.
"Barra," she said thoughtfully
without turning from the window, "do you remember the children's fairy
tales? Do you remember the story about the magic fountain of youth ?"
Barra nodded her head and said,
"Ummm." She had packed the pipe and lit it, the fumes drifting
through the room.
"Wouldn't it be . . . funny . . .
strange if there were such a fountain on the other side of the mountains?"
"No,
it wouldn't. I and my kind would be out of business. But Zee, you've made me
think of something else. Back home our exploratory parties have never failed
to find traces of previous peoples or civilizations. Remember the buried cities
they uncovered along the shores of that inland sea in the Big Continent? It
occurs to me that possibly, just possibly, something of the same sort might be
found out there. We might be prepared for that."
"What are you suggesting?" She
turned from the window and wrinkled her nose at the tobacco fumes.
"Well,
a few years ago you had a trooper stationed here who was something of an
authority on things like that. I recall that we spent many pleasant evenings
together. Don't remember her name, though. Missed her calling—she should have been
ax archeologist."
"Oh, yes, tht
one." Zee put her fingers to her eyes, thinking. "She was an
archeologist, completed her term at Queen's College,
I believe, and then changed her mind to join the army. What is her name?"
"Perri,"
the corporal supplied. "Stationed on North Island, Captain." ___
"Perri," the captain nodded.
"Good woman, good fighter."
She tried to wipe tobacco smoke out of the
air with her hand. "Leave that thing at home, will you? I see no reason
why Perri shouldn't be included. Barra—do you think there may be buried cities
out there? Do you realize what that would mean?"
"Certainly,"
Doctor Barra replied matter of factly. "Perri
and I have discussed it many an evening. It would mean some other civilization,
or dozens of them, existed and died when the Home Isles were nothing more than
wandering tribes. It could mean, Zee, that my Twoeightyfour is the descendant
of some race which vanished centuries before the First Queen took the
throne." She chuckled "We've tagged him as a stray, ah outlander.
What do you suppose he thinks we are?"
Zee was staring at the
.map.
"There might be some sound reason, after
all, for his drawing that coastline a hurtled miles at sea,"
"Ummm. My guess is that the coastline used to be
out there. The land .sank, and now we are living on the present coastline. But
if it sank out there, it may have raised somewhere else. That might explain the
mountains behind us."
"I've a mind," Zee continued
absently, "to make a request for divers in my next report. If there was a
coastline there and if it sank, there might be cities under the sea. Cities are
always built along the seas. But,; Barra—if there were
traces of civilizations to be found in this land, why haven't we found any
along the coast?"
"I
don't know—perhaps all this area came nip from the sea
No, that wouldn't coincide with the new map. Oh, I don't know, Ask Perri."
She
arose from her chair and made ready to leave. "Don't forget the
vinegar—we'll need it. I'll drop in again this evening."
"Barra . . ." The captain stopped
her as she was reaching for the door latch. "Barra, we can't allow the stra—the man to go hungry. Get him some fresh meat."
Barra nodded,
a half smile on her lips. "Your wish is my
command. Fresh meat by the ton!" "Close the door!" Zee
snapped. "Consider it closed."
Trooper Perri stalked into the barracks and
dropped her bag on the floor near the door.
"Hi— what's the excitement? Is the Queen
coming over?"
"To this place?" a tall woman from
the peninsula asked derisively. "Not on your life! And I was beginning to
like it down south—I had those scared little beggars running at the flick of my
finger. I blew a whistle, and they dumped a basket of oranges in my lap; blew
twice, and they made it bananas. And now look where I am! I didn't get my full
time out either only been there a couple of months."
"Tough, chicken, tough," Perri told
her. "I've come back from North Island, and I'm plenty happy to get back.
Two months in that frozen hole is more than enough. But what's going on here?
The natives actually stir up a stink?"
Somebody laughed. "These men? Don't be silly."
Perri sat down on a bunk,
testing it.
"That's mine," the
tall woman declared.
Perri measured her. "Big
enough to take it away from me, sister?"
"First come," the woman from the peninsula
said. "Trot—get yourself another one. Go blow a whistle. Say .. " Perri
stopped, surprised. "Maybe we're going home?" "No such luck. Not
a ship in sight."
Somebody
shoved a bag under the adjoining bunk. "They pulled me in from the
mountains—up there at West Pass. Something big going on, that's sure, because
they doubled all the watches just before I left. And I just met a couple of
chickens I knew, out in the street. They said they were in from the cotton
country."
"Ah,
it has to be the Queen. She's coming over for an inspection tour."
Perri
glanced up from the bunk, found the tall woman still there.
"Now look, chicken, blow like a good girl before I plant my fist in
your belly—down where you'll remember it!"
The supply officer tapped
lightly on the office door and pushed it open. "Captain?"
Zee
turned from her study of the wall map. "Yes? Come in, Lieutenant. 1 want to talk to you." "Captain," Lieutenant
Donn said quickly, "I've been studying the stray, and it has occurred to
me—" "Yes?" Zee watched her.
"Well,
Captain, I would like permission to make room in one of the wagons for
trinkets—beads, a few simple tools perhaps. It has occurred to me that if we
should find other natives out there—beyond the mountains—a few gifts would
help. Judging from this one man, they have nothing.".
"Lieutenant,
I ... I was planning to\leave you in charge of the post after we departed."
Donn
straightened. "If you please, Captain, I'm making a request to go with the
expedition."
Zee
walked over to the window without answering. The company street was beginning
to fill with troopers coming in from the outlying sections. Four days, she
thought, four days ago the security patrol had picked up a
stray and set events in motion. Four days ago she had gone carefully
over a list of women who were to make the trip. Four days ago Lieutenant Donn
hadn't wanted to be one of those explorers. But sometime during the past four
days Lieutenant Donn had discovered the stray, seen the man, possibly
even studied him. And now the woman had changed her mind completely.
Twoeightyfour was certainly
a potent force.
She
made up her mind. "All right, Lieutenant. You will be in charge of the
lead wagon, carrying the food and water. I'm handling weapons, in the wagon
behind you. Sergeant Prest will bring up the rear with the bedding. See if you
can find room for your gifts in the first or the last—nothing but weapons will
go in mine."
"Thank you,
Captain."
"We
are leaving at dawn on the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow night there will be a
briefing in the mess hall—everyone making the trip is to be there. See that the
troops have full battle gear and ready to march; I think we'll start as soon as
the dawn rain ends. I'll check again with you later, but I believe we will put
those people from the peninsula up front— they are a bit angry at being called
in so soon and are spoiling for a, fight. Oft—and Lieutenant..."
"Yes, Captain?"
"Pass along these orders: in the event
of trouble, the stray is to be shot immediately if he fails to display complete
loyalty to us." She said it fiercely, almost angrily.
"Captain!" Bonn was startled.
"Orders," Zee repeated. "I
will not tolerate a guide whd cannot be
trusted." She frowned inwardly, wondering at her own vehemence. The
corporal had noticed something, too—from the corner of her eye she found the
girl watching her.
Bonn said again, "Yes,
Captain," and went out.
Zee
turned her back on the corporal, strode to the window to stare at the
retreating back of the lieutenant. So in just four days the woman had completely
reversed herself, now wanted to go along. After seeing the
man, of course. Very well, the lieutenant would be one of the party. But her orders would stand: the man would be hers or
he would be shot.
Mentally
startled, she looked at her close reflection in the window glass. Now why was she so suddenly aroused, why had
she
phrased that thought in so positive a manner? Zee didn't know. She watched the
lieutenant out of sight.
Barra would have known, could have told her.
Barra had
known men back home, in the Isles. Barra knew the meaning
of jealousy. N
Five
"WAG0NS and women waited in the cold
light of the false dawn, waited under their coverings in the light rain beating
down from the eternally grey skies. The three wagons stood in a line outside the
door of the captain's office, the teams patiently unmoving in the downpour.
The spare horses were tied to the tailgate of the second wagon. Two hostlers
sat huddled on the seat of each, the other troops clustered close in vain
attempt to find shelter about the wagons.
The
settlement natives were absent, still sleeping, or perhaps awake but remaining
in the confines of their houses. A few troopers, those remaining behind,
lounged in the doorways and windows of the barracks,
staring at the wagons. No me had reported in sick the night before. From the
far end of the company street four figures appeared, Doctor Barra, two guards,
and the stray. He was dressed, as usual, in the kneelength
trousers.
Barra
went into the commandant's office. The guards paused outside, and the man
stayed with them.
After
a short wait the door opened again and Barra reappeared, to be followed by the
captain and Lieutenant Donn. Zee paused on the steps to make her coat
watertight, and found herself face to face with the man. He stood there in the
rain, arms folded, calmly watching her.
"Guard
dismissed," she said. "Remember your orders."
The pair' saluted and joined the waiting
ranks about the
wagons and arrayed themselves in two lines on either side, in marching order. A dozen stopped in a silent
knot in the
rear of the last wagon. Zee cast her eyes forward an
picked out a half dozen more, widely dispersed, waiting far forward of the lead wagon.
"Ready,
Lieutenant?"
"Yes,
Captain." '
"Very well,
toll."
The lieutenant blew a
whistle and shouted, "Roll 'em!"
The
hostler handling the reins in the lead wagon cracked a whip, and the team
jerked into motion. Immediately behind, the other two wagons rolled forward,
the troops keeping pace. Zee was walking beside Barra, abreast of the horses
pulling the lead wagon. The stray walked along a' half dozen steps ahead.
"Wish us good luck,
Barra." '
"Here's to ick
and a tan, Zee. May we come back as brown
as he is!" n '
"May we come back," Zee echoed. Her
eyes remained on
the brownneck and naked back of the man Inarching
before
her. "We will be on familiar—and friendly territory until we
reach the West Pass: That will be our last water stop. After
that we are in his hands, and by the Sainted Queen . . .!" She
unconsciously touched the dagger blade hanging at her side
"They had better prove safe hands;"
Barra flashed her a side glance but said nothing. "
"I'm
hoping," Zee continued, "that he knows or can find us a decent route
through the mountains. I don't fancy stumbling around over those rocks for donkey’s weeks."
"Fiddle! Where's your pioneer spirit?"
"Pioneers like the easy path when it can be found' She dis
covered her eyes tracing the scar again. "And by
the Way, have
you given him a name or does he remain a number?"
Barra chuckled, Twoeightyfour
is still Twoeightyfour
on my records. But to me he is a wolf."
"Wolf? Isn't that an
animal?"
"Yes,
but it is also a given name—not a familiar one I'll grant you, but I've known
it." Her tone betrayed her, caused Zee to look around.
"You've known someone
named Wolf?"
Barra nodded,
her eyes on the man's heels. "A long time ago and a long distance
away." She smiled faintly. "The name, on him, was funny. His mother
had fondly hoped he'd be a strapping man, and she named him after her
hopes." Barra
shook her head. "How
badly she was fooled—but I liked him. It pleased him to be called Wolf, and I
suppose I catered to his vanity. But the name certainly didn't fit." She
glanced up at the man from across the mountains. "So I named him Wolf. Only partly because of sentiment. On him, it fits."
"Yes,"
Zee agreed, "I suppose it does, though I've never seen a wolf'
The
caravan passed along the streets of the settlement to the edge of town. The
houses thinned out and became smaller, the spaces between them larger. Small
gardens and patches of farm appeared, and here and there a furtive face peered
at them briefly from some window. In minutes the troop had
left the last of the town behind and were in the open country, traveling
in a westerly direction and already encountering a slow, almost imperceptible
rising of the ground. Behind them in the distance the morning bell began to
ring. The rain lightened and the sky took on a brighter tinge.
The scouts walking point took it easy,, knowing the teams could not keep up with them, knowing
there was reason for vigilance this early on the march. After they crossed the
Pass and entered strange territory, it would be different; there the land would
be strange and the things—whatever things there might be—would be unguessable; yes, there it would be different. There the
pointers would spread out and walk slowly, carrying weapons at ready, stopping
every now and then to allow the wagons to catch up.
Beyond
the Pass the flanks would fan out to protect the wagons from a hidden attack
the points had bypassed, and there the rear guard would fall back, expendables,
to prevent any surprise action from behind. A wily enemy might allow scouts,
troops and wagons to pass on ahead of them and then come in from the rear. But
the greatest point of danger was from the front, and the soldiers walking there
were handpicked, eternally ready. Beyond the Pass all eyes would be on the
points, watching for a signal.
The
wagons crawled along a country road, toward the foothills. Occasionally a
farmer or his timid wife would stand in some yard, watching them pass, or
horses at pasture might gallop up to the roadline
fence to exchange noises with the teams hauling the wagons. Gradually the sky
had brightened with day and the rain had stopped, the air became warmer and
raincoats were pulled off, rolled up and buckled. Weapons were examined for
dampness. Short swords clanked at every knee, a bow and packet of arrows were
strapped across every back but those of the officers. Each trooper carried in a
breast pocket a small vial of poisonous liquid, a dip for arrow tips if danger
should arise. The weapons wagon was loaded with arrows, spare bows, and metaltipped spears.
Officers
and troops of the Home Isles' Crown Colony of Western Somerset were moving
westward, for the first time bucking the mountain chain which had barred their
path into the interior. For the first time they fully realized there was an interior.
The
slow realization was
indicative of their thinking, of the equally slow rise from savagery of their
own forebears Not too many hundreds of years in their past history the Home Isles had been populated by little more than occasional tribes working small
farms, living in small villages, fighting off the wandering bands of warring
women who roamed the island.
In slow time the country worked itself out of
the dark age, banded
itself together and, because of the great preponderance of women over men,
placed the First Queen on the throne. Afterwards the rise toward a semblance
of civilization had been quicker.
Following
the matriarchal government came institutions, organization,
and the first faint exploratory steps by sea. The channel was crossed and a
vast continent discovered on the other side. A hundred years later, the great,
mysterious ocean was crossed and another land discovered, a rather fruitful
land lying between the mountains and the sea. The Crown Colony of Western
Somerset was established and the natives put to work exporting food and metals
to the homeland. The Home Isles prospered by,being the center of the known world, and all the
known world was the undisputed empire of the Queen.
'.Because
their growth and thought was slow, the new civilization hadn't yet got around
to organized digging into the past, to asking the question, "Before us,
what?" Ruins of cities and peoples were uncovered and pieces toted home
for casual display in museums; schools taught archeology and the kindred
sciences in a listless, haphazard sort of way, and their students, like Trooper
Perri, turned to some other trade or profession soon after graduation because a
respectable means of livelihood in the scientific fields was lacking, and
because an insufficient amount of curiosity and desire had been implanted in
those students. The Island
people thought of the past
but not in a way demanding concerted action. They knew they had emerged from a
dark and murderous age because of tales handed down by oldsters and because of
simple lessons taught in elementary schools, but as yet there was no incentive
to probe the reason for such an age, to find out why it had been a black,
disorganized primitive life, to discover what had caused it.
There
was nothing to suggest that perhaps there had been something else, before the
darkness. An occasional student
speculated, and rarer still someone formulated theories
based upon findings. Ruined walls of cities were uncovered, yes. But all
thinking stopped with the primitive, dark well from which the tribes and the
roaming bands had built a government.
Who put
the relics and the cities there was relegated to idle discussion, to an
evening's entertainment.
Captain
Zee led a troop into uncharted wilderness like many other commanders before
her, thinking that perhaps she would find new lands for the Crown, new wealth
and materials for the Isles, and just possibly new museum pieces like many
other commanders before her. Her troop had but two advantages denied to or
lacking in those other commanders.
One
of the present number was a former archeology student,
now marching along the left flank because archeology failed to pay a living.
Secondly, the troop had the services of a guide, a native of the unknown country. He wasn't particularly regarded as much
of an advantage, although four of the marching women thought he might prove
useful—to them.
"Barra
..." Zee broke a long and
thoughtful silence to glance up at the man and then at the doctor. "It is
a strange thing. Has something occurred to you?"
"A lot of things have occurred to me,"
the doctor told her. She carried a cold pipe in her mouth. "All pleasant, and I'm looking
forward to their happening. What's on your mind?"
"Twoeighty—I
mean Wolf. We pressed him into service as a guide without so much as asking him. You find I made up our minds he would lead our expedition over the mountains— and here we are. Barra, we
haven't told him where we are going or what we are after. And yet, there he
walks, doing our bidding without being asked—or told."
Barra removed the pipe from her mouth and
laughed. "Zee, you still haven't read my report of a week ago."
"What are you
suggesting now?"
"If you had read my
report, among many other things you'd have found I included some speculations.
And one of the matters I speculated on was his uncanny ability to know the
right things to do without being asked—or told. I gave him a thorough physical
examination, remember? And I mean thorough! I spent more than two hours going
over him from top to toe. Of course, I took my time doing it—it was a
pleasure." She grinned with appreciation of the memory.
"But
after a while it dawned on me that something was happening, and I devised
little tests for him. Suppose I wanted to examine his feet; I remember
wondering if he had webbed toes or something of the sort and decided to look.
Very well, I told myself, I'll examine his feet next. And before I could reach
for them, he pushed them out in front of me. Or I would be standing near his
feet arid suddenly thinking of looking for wax in his ears. Believe me, Zee, he
would sit up and cock his head over to one side. And I looked for wax. That sort of thing."
"He
anticipated your moves? Are you suggesting he read your thoughts
?"
Barra shrugged. "I don't know. He knew I didn't intend to
harm him. When the patrol brought him in, I pointed to my
operating table, and he stretched out on it. And he stayed there
until I was1 finished." She began searching in her pockets for
tobacco. "
"But
it is impossible that he could read your thoughts. That is fantastic; it
is—"
"Yes, isn't it?"
The captain's gaze leaped to the back of the
man's head. "So incredible a thing . . .like
black magic . . ." Suddenly and without warning she whipped out the
dagger at her waist and leaped for his naked back, raising the blade high to
plunge it into his spine.
Barra
threw up her hands to stop the woman, trying to cry out but unable to make a
sound. The blade flashed down to within an inch of the brown skin and stopped waiting.
Wolf walked on without turning,, without
flinching or otherwise displaying any knowledge of her closeness, of the knife
poised at his back.
Some
of the nearer troops had seen the movement, had stepped in close with barbed
spears at readiness. Zee waved them back. She slipped the dagger back into its
sheath and waited for the doctor to catch up.
"Zee, what in the
Queen's name .. .
?"
Zee
smiled at her coldly. "So much for your speculations,
Doctor. He didn't read my mind; he didn't know I was there!"
Barra finished tamping the pipe with hands
that shook. She struck a light. "You didn't really intend to kill him, did
you? You had no intentions of touching him?"
"Of
course not. I
was .only testing him."
Barra
nodded. "Ummm. He wouldn't have known it was a test, would he? He wouldn't have read both thoughts?"
Zee
stared at her, frowning. And then, without realizing why she did it, she
clapped both hands over her ears, as if to shut out a prying mind, to close off
her thoughts.
Wolf walked with his eyes
on the near mountains.
In mid afternoon the wagon train stopped at
West Pass for water. A few curious guards stationed at the Pass, converge! on the troop, asking questions. The woman who had so
recently been called away from the station made a ribald gesture to the
troopers she left a week ago, and waggled her thumb westward, toward the
mountains.
Beyond
the Pass were narrow valleys, rutted streams and seemingly towering mountains,
inhabited only by those occasional men who straggled down onto the coastal
plain to steal fire and food from the villagers. Beyond the Pass was the unknown
land where no soldier of the Queen had set foot. Until now.
Three wagons and a full hundred troops
streamed through
the
pass and down the gentle slope of the long valley whose end was lost in blue grey
haze and a forest of trees. The wagons creaked loudly in the' valley
stillness, despite heavy applications of grease. A half dozen keyed up troops
walked point, on the alert for any living thing; they were already out of sight
in the forest ahead, the flanking
line was far out. pacing the noisy wagons. And the
rear guard waited impatiently in the Pass, standing around the sentry boxes
watching until the last wagon had dwindled with distance and was almost lost
among the trees.
Someone
gave an order and, with weapons ready, they followed.
Three Wagons and a hundred troops, four teams, one civilian, one
native.
The guards remaining at the sentry boxes stood on a crest of ground and watched
the last of the caravan out of sight. None, save one, was seen again. The bones
of that one were found far up the valley, picked clean by some scavenger. The
remains were identified only as some trooper by the inedible hardware left
with the body. And after due consideration of those bones, the new military
authority of the Crown Colony of Western Somerset closed the Pass.
The troops found themselves on a wide, flat
natural roadbed following a slowly twisting stream; a closer approach to the
forest revealed the roadbed where no trees grew and the scouts on point
followed it as the easiest way. The stream wound peacefully around minor
foothills, gradually narrowing as it climbed the watershed. An hour's brisk
march brought no more difficult ground although the mountains around them
constantly rose more sharply.
The transport sergeant put a detail to
hacking away the
underbrush along the trail, clearing a path among the wildly
growing green scrubs for the teams and wagons. The brush
thiniied out as they climbed higher.
Almost like a road, isn't it?" Barra asked.
"Too
much like one—even the trees make way for it. It isn't natural for trees to be
like that."
"Ummm. Well they are, nevertheless. Might as well accept
it."
Zee turned and picked out a familiar face in the line of troops on the left flank. She lifted an
arm. "Perri!"
A
woman broke ranks and trotted over to them. "Yes, Captain?"
"Perri,
have you noticed this roadway? Have you given it any particular
attention?"
"Yes, Captain. I don't
think it's a natural way."
"Artificial?
Those trees were deliberately planted to either side?"
"Not
that, Captain, not necessarily." She hesitated, searching for the right
expression. "But if ... if there
had been a road here in the past, say a road made of
paving stones, the passage of time would have covered the road but large trees
wouldn't grow above the stones. Not until the soil had piled up pretty deep, at
least."
Zee looked down at the
ground beneath her feet.
"We
could dig down and find out, Captain," Perri offered eagerly.
Zee shook her head decisively. "Not
here, not now. I can't afford the delay." She glanced at the trooper.
"But if we are still on this roadway when we make camp tonight, you may
dig if you wish."
"Yes, Captain."
"I'll join you, Perri," the doctor
put in. "I want to see, too. Paving stones, do you think?"
"It
doesn't have to be stones, Doctor. Old pathways have been found on the
continent which were made by nothing more than millions of feet. Grass never
grew there again. And I've heard tell of some other kinds of paths, or narrow
roads. They were buried under a foot
of topsoil. They seemed to be made of pitch or some hardpacked tarry
substance'
Zee measured the spacing
between the trees.
"This one seems to be rather wide for
that sort of thing. There could be no sensible reason for an artificial road
this
wide."
"I've noticed that, Captain. I can't
explain it." Perri swung her hand. "Why, I'll wager that six teams
and wagons could march abreast on this roadway."
Doctor
Barra spoke up again. "I've been watching the turns —have you? Look at
that one up ahead. Now if we were building a road, we'd drive it straight toward that hill and make, a sharp turn
around it. This thing doesn't do that. Look at the wide, slow curve." She
raised a finger to point at the marching troops far ahead. "See those
women? If we follow this curve, it'll take us twenty minutes to get to the spot
where they are now. But we could cut straight across country and reach them in
ten."
"The point1s well made, Barra. If this
is an artificial roadway, why was so much space wasted?" "I don't
know, Captain."
The
barren way continued, winding through the hills and evading the steeper
mountains. Gradually the trees were left behind and a grassy, empty land took
their place. The visibility was increased.
Once
a sudden cry from one of the points brought the entire train to a halt, weapons at alert, but the sighted object was only one of the wild
mountain men, easily recognizable by his ragged clothing. He scuttled off among
the rocks, frightened by
their presence. The troop
resumed its march. No animals were seen.
"Not
that I expect any," Zee said shortly,
commenting on the
absence of game.
"Those confounded wagons would frighten away anything within a
day's march. I’m afraid food will become a problem;
The doctor didn't offer an answer. The
constant pace was tiring the woman, but she fought to conceal it.
For the hundredth time since they had left
the coastal village behind, Zee found herself
studying the man. 'The spectacle she had made of herself clapping her hands
over her ears to conceal her thoughts annoyed her, or the mental image did. She
imagined the troops had been watching, imagined that
they knew what she was doing. Barra knew, but Barra had kept silent with an
understanding Zee had come to appreciate in the older woman. It had been a
silly, useless gesture. She wasn't quite ready to admit that the doctor was
right, that the man would
know her mind, but still
there was always the fantastic possibility. And holding her hands over her ears
could not shut off her thoughts from him—if the possibility was true. He must
have laughed at her. Laughed inwardly, in his mind, so that
it would not show on his face.
She didn't want him to laugh at her.
Why not? After all, he was only a native. The
natives were necessary in their place, and one took no real notice of them. To
be sure, from time to time there had been stories passed around by the troops,
stories to the effect that so and so teased one or another of the native men,
played with them, but she didn't believe that one of her troops would ever go
so far . . • so far as to . .
. One didn't cross the barrier to reach a native.
Wolf. She didn't want Wolf to laugh at her,
for any reason. She rather hoped she could be friendly with him. Surely there
was some other nature to him than a cold, insolent gaze. Beneath that browned
skin, somewhere below that towering height, there must be something human about
him. She would like to discover it. The march would be a long one—they might as
well cover it on friendly terms.
His eyes were attractive. She liked the
intelligence she read in them.
Abruptly, Wolf stopped. Zee paused in alarm—was he knowing her thoughts again? The man turned to her
and raised one lazy brown arm, pointing ahead. Zee stared that way.
The
scouts had stopped. One of them was running back to the captain.
Zee snapped an order. "Alert!"
The
troops had anticipated the command when the scout turned about, had their
weapons up. Zee took a position beside the man. "What is it?" she
asked. He pointed again, beyond the scouts.
The
trailway had slowly narrowed about them, to enter a
small canyon and curve with its turnings. The stream they had been following
was by now no more than a rocky rivulet, often hidden by the brush and nearer
hillocks. Far ahead, a quarter of n mile in advance of the points, everything
came to an end. Road and valley stopped with a wall of earth.
The scout ran up, out of
breath with the effort.
"Canyon blocked,
Captain. We can't go forward."
"Blocked? Is there no
path around it?"
"No, Captain. It looks
like a landslide. We're boxed in."
Zee
whirled to the rear to check on the guard. They had stopped and turned about to
face the way they had come, alert for any danger behind them. She touched
Wolf's arm, looked Up the short distance into his eyes.
"Well?"
He
said nothing but stepped to the nearer wagon and pried loose one of the spades
fastened there. Swinging the spade, he started forward. Zee hesitated
only the barest instant and with a quick motion of her hand, ordered others to
get spades. She followed the man.
Wolf passed through the forward line of
scouts and on up
the
canyon, followed by a handful of troopers carrying spades. The scouts kept
pace, weapons ready. He paused at the foot of the slide and searched its face.
In
the silence of the canyon the tinkling of water was audible, splashing down over
some unseen waterfall. For the first time they heard birds singing, somewhere
out of sight. On either side of the canyon reared two mountainous peaks, scalable
on foot perhaps but certainly out of the question for teams and wagons. At some
time in the past one of the peaks had sent a shower of earth and rocks
cascading down into the canyon, blocking it completely. The troops stared at
the slide, not knowing the next move. Grass cropped out of the soil here and
there, indicating its firmness.
Wolf began climbing.
Seven
or eight feet above their heads he stopped and dropped swiftly to one knee to
examine the ground. Turning to the captain below him, he made a vague warning
motion with his arm, waving her aside. Cautiously, she moved away. Wolf then
moved around and behind a boulder perched there, threw
his weight against it to send it tumbling down to the road. Zee was alert. The
moving of the boulder revealed a black hole in the slide. Wolf attacked the
opening with his spade, enlarging it.
Zee ordered the others up
to help him.
After
thirty minutes labor, Zee discovered what was behind the slide. She cast a
calculating eye at the sky to realize that not all of the earth could be moved
that day, and gave orders to msjce camp. The wagons
were drawn up in triangular formation to form a bulwark, and the teams
unhitched and tethered. Sentries were posted, and still the work on the slide
continued. Torches were lighted when darkness fell under the slategrey clouds.
For the first time there was no evening rain.
It delighted the doctor. "We're getting
there, Zee, we're getting there! No rain in paradise!"
Zee stood on the canyon floor with her feet
braced wide
apart, hands on hips, watching the diggers in the flickering
torchlight. She had taken off her helmet to shake loose her
bronzed hair, letting it fall down to cover the back of her
neck. The hair bobbled as she nodded her head. ,
"We
are, Barra, we are. But I'm wondering who was here before us?"
"Ummm. Worrying again?"
"The road, Barra, don't forget the
roadway. Suppose Perri is right, suppose that a long time ago there was a road
here. It wound through the mountains, and when it came to a mountain it
couldn't cross, what would it do?"
"Well... well."
"It would go under the mountain, Barra.
That road would be built right up to the face of the mountain .and then go
through and under it. Through a tunnel. Barra, can you
deny that is a tunnel they are uncovering?"
The doctor peered at the
large opening.
"No—it's
a tunnel all right. A handmade tunnel." She had
almost said womanmade, by habit, and then mentally
switched to manmade. But caution brought it out as "handmade."
Six
HPHE
full magnificent size and build of the tunnel was revealed in the dry morning
light. Undeniably artificial, and still not completely uncovered, the tunnel
was fifteen feet or more in height and wide enough to admit two teams and wagons
walking abreast. A rough dirtygrey stone formed its interior walls and
ceiling, although the adhesive substance used between the chinks had fallen
away in places, letting parts of the ceiling crash down in powder and rubble.
The tunnel's length vanished in inky blackness.
"Handmade," Zee repeated to Barra,
touching the walls. She
«
pointed to
the ceiling. "We have nothing like that."
She
waited impatiently at the mouth of the tunnel, watching the darkness inside.
After a hasty breakfast she had sent three scouts in to penetrate its length,
to find its other end if there was one. They had been gone an hour.
Wolf
had worked most of the night, to lay aside his spade a few hours before dawn and fall asleep on the ground beneath one of the
wagons. The movement had awakened Zee; she had propped herself upon an elbow to
watch him in his sleep. The nearer troops sleeping around the wagons had moved
their bedrolls further away from him. Briefly that annoyed her, and then she
dismissed it with a mental note to offer him a spare bedroll. He had slept
instantly and quietly without moving. She guessed he was used to sleeping on
the open ground. Her last hazy memory was of a nightbird
calling somewhere off in the darkness.
"Captain!"
Zee
whirled to stare into the tunnel. Someone was running. The scout came up.
"The other end is open, Captain. And there's another tunnel after this
one. Open." "Still another? How long is this
one?" "About two miles, Captain." "Two
miles!"
"Yes, Captain. We're waiting at the
other end of this one. Shall we go on ?"
Zee turned it over in her mind. An incredible tunnel two miles long and still another beyond that
was almost beyond her comprehension. Without a doubt it was handmade,
but made by whose hands ? Those hands had been dead
for at least an age—the dust and rubble here attested that.
"Did
you find any signs of life at the other end ? Were there marks in the dust?"
"No, Captain.
Everything was deserted."
Still she hesitated, lp until this moment she had felt that the expedition could turn back at any time, that she could abandon the undertaking and return to the security of the colony
if it appeared that the value to be received
was not worth the risk. Once she plunged into the tunnel, however, she must go on. Of course there would be places
to turn around and come back, but this was the gateway. If she passed through the gateway, she should not turn around; if she intended
to quit and go back, she should not enter the tunnel. She glanced up to find
Wolf watching her, waiting.
"Captain ?"
It was the scout.
"Yes?"
"Captain—the sun was shining at the
other end." "The sun ... ?" She found herself looking up at the blanket of
clouds stretching toward the mountains. "Bright, Captain. Almost blinding. Blue sky."
Zee gave in. "Very well." She
turned to Lieutenant Donn. "Roll, Lieutenant."
"Yes, Captain." She raised the whistle to her lips.
"The rear guard will remain here until
we are in the open country at the other end. Send back a runner for them."
"Yes, Captain."
Zee stepped into the tunnel mouth. Someone
was beside her with a torch. She looked around to find Wolf. She stumbled once,
somewhere along the astonishing length of the tunnel, and would have fallen. He
reached out quickly to hold her up, and when she had recovered he thrust the
rock aside to clear the path for the wagons following. Continuing the march in
the halflight of the torch, she found herself
dwelling on the incident, and at the same time wondering why she should think
about it. She would have fallen over the unseen rock, and he had prevented it.
That was all. And yet there was something more to the gesture than appeared on
the surface. Not one of the coastal natives would have touched a soldier, no
matter what the reason. Fear and respect of a sort kept them at a distance.
That
brought a wry twist to her lips. Wolf had precious little fear and respect for
anything, much less her.
His
hand and arm had slid out smoothly and effortlessly, had held her for a second
or so while she regained her balance, and then it had been withdrawn. There had
been a tremendous strength in that arm. With a shock she realized that he could
have lifted and carried her if he had chosen. What was it Barra had said, that
night a week ago when the patrol had brought him in? Something about "... he can handle any five of your
troopers."
She
didn't want any man her equal, much less her master. Zee pushed back her
shoulders and stepped ahead of him. A dim light was growing in the distance.
The sun was blinding.
As
they came from the darkness of the tunnel, its effect was overpowering. Zee's
troops stood on the roadway outside the tunnel mouth, hands to their eyes. She
opened her mouth to shout an order and then she too stepped forward into the
sun and instinctively closed her eyelids. The alarm leaped into her mind that
it was dangerous, that they could be struck down from above or the sides while
they stood there unseeing," and she fought to open her eyes against the
glare. The first thing she saw was Wolf, waiting with folded arms, watching
her. Behind him was the green slope of another mountain.
It annoyed her. Why was he
always watching her?
"Forward!" she
ordered.
The scouts led off slowly, reluctant to leave
the sun for the darkness of another tunnel. "Move!" she snapped
sharply.
The troop passed through
the second and still a third tunnel that day, to camp finally for the
night outside the maw of a fourth. The tunnels had been of varying lengths,
some as short as a half mile, the longest the two mile trek of the first one.
Between each had always been the sun, waiting for them. Some of the troops had
taken off their helmets and bared their arms. Doctor Barra walked gaily along,
her sleeves rolled almost to her shoulders. That night she passed around the
vinegar but few used it.
The tunnels continued for another two days,
and then the height of the mountains dropped away and once again a roadway
commenced winding through the valleys and over the smaller hills. By the end of
the first week, every skin was burned red save that of the man's, and most were
peeling. The vinegar was used freely and a few of the troops claimed to be
finding a faint brownness on their arms and necks. And by the end of the first
week, Zee knew that Lieutenant Donn wanted the man, knew that a clash of wills
was coming, for in some unidentified manner she realised
that she also wanted him.
She was unable to state how it was that she
wanted him, to name the desire that she felt, for in her eyes he was still a
native, and no one ever crossed the barrier to touch a native. Still, she felt
a fierce, possessive instinct, and that instinct made, her
want to keep Wolf near her—always. He marched with her, he worked with
her when work was needed to clear the path or explore a stream, and she now had
little doubt but what he would fight with her if necessary. He was hers. That
ended the matter.
But
in a week's time, Lieutenant Ponn had shown by her attitude
that it didn't end the matter. . ■
Barra
observed it all and said nothing. Barra saw what was happening, recognized it,
thought she knew how it might end! And she said nothing because she thought it
might be a fitting end. One can't eat, sleep and digest the military way all
one's life.
During that week Captain Zee found that four
of her command were interested in the man. She
had already known that two of them were interested—the doctor and herself. But
then the doctor was to be excused; it was her profession. Barra was interested in Wolf as a laboratory specimen, the
occasional remarks which also revealed her as a female could be laid to her
liberal and open minded trade. There wasn't anything about the man that failed
to interest Barra, and' she didn't hesitate to say so if it suited her mood.
With some surprise the captain discovered
that Trooper Perri had also taken an interest in Wolf, but after a moment's thought she decided it was the archeologist in the woman, not
the female. Nevertheless, Zee kept her under observation.
And
lastly there was Donn, who hadn't wanted to come at all until she first saw the
man.
Four of them. She was briefly thankful the entire troop
didn't entertain similar thoughts. She would have an uncontrollable mutiny on
her hands if one hundred women suddenly decided Wolf was their property! No—four
were enough.
The
end of that first week found them on the edge of open prairie.
The fruit was gone, and the water tanks had
been refilled twice from nearby streams. They had been cautious at first abSut drinking from the streams, but after the man had unhesitatingly dropped
to the ground and dipped his face into swiftly running water, the tanks were
refilled.
Once
a scout had surprised an animal resembling a
pig and brought the wild beast down with one quick
arrow. A wild and tart variety of grape was discovered and picked. Someone had
trapped a few large birds and attempted to prepare a
meal, but the taste quickly changed their minds, and thereafter the birds were let alone. By the end of that week the meat
supply was running low and Zee received her next great shock. Wolf, as usual,
provided it.
Late in the afternoon a scout came back to report that a
pack of animals had been spotted, about twenty in number and resembling horses
although the animals were much smaller than those horses pulling the wagons.
Zee went forward, accompanied as always by the man.
They dropped to the ground, hidden from the
animals by the tall grass, and watched. The scout loosed an arrow from her pack
and fitted it into the bow. Surprisingly, Wolf put out a hand to stop her. She
drew back.
Zee whispered, and the
scout subsided.
Wolf got to his feet and by pressing his hand
into the small of her back signaled her not to follow. He moved away from the
group to circle around the animals. Crouching low and running around to their
rear, he kept himself so well hidden that it was difficult to follow him with
the eye. Zee watched him, wondering.
Suddenly
Wolf leaped up from the grass and uttered a shrill yell. She jumped.
The
grazing ponies jerked their heads high, startled, saw him and started to run
for the group hidden in the grass. An excited trooper jumped to her feet and
made ready with an arrow. Others followed.
The
frightened pack swerved at the unexpected appearance of this new enemy and
thundered away across the open prairie after their leader. An arrow flew after
them, to fall far short. Another followed, but they were already out of range.
Zee saw a sudden flash of bronzed skin and shouted an order. The weapons were
dropped, forgotten, the order not needed.
Wolf was running across the
field after the ponies.
A
scout stood openmouthed. I’ll be the mother of a bastard!"
The
man ran with the incredible speed of a racing horse, faster than Zee had ever
seen a human run before, so swiftly that in seconds he began to overtake the
hindmost animals. He sped over the ground in great leaps as effortlessly as a
graceful bird soaring on an updraft, as quickly as an arrow fired by an angry
archer. In less than ten breaths he had overtaken the flying pack, was running
swiftly alongside them, to lunge suddenly at the nearest pony. She saw him
throw his body upon the neck of the beast, wrap his long legs about it and
somehow hurl it to the ground.
The
pack thundered off into the distance and were lost.
The tall grass thrashed briefly where man and pony had fallen. Zee forced
herself from her trance and ran toward the spot.
She came upon them and
stopped suddenly.
Wolf
was sitting on the ground, chest heaving with the exertion. The pony lay
beside him, neck broken.
Beside her, Lieutenant Donn
broke the silence.
"I wish he'd teach me
to do that!"
Zee
turned on her, unaccountably angry. "Summon the cook. This solves the meat
problem."
The lieutenant turned away, failing to hide a
grin. "Yes, Captain."
The flank steak taken from the pony was tough
and the flavor not all that could be desired, but it was food. Zee and thfe doctor sat ..with their backs
to a wagon wheel some feet from the fire, sawing away at the meat. Corporal
Avon was near by.
"I've never eaten this sort of thing
before," Zee complained. She cut 6ff a piece of meat and put it into her
mouth. The chewing was difficult. "And I'm not sure I like the idea—we
will all be barbarians in ne time."
"You
might eat worse than this before we're home again," Barra retorted. She
pointed with her fork. "Look yonder— we're already barbarians."
Wolf
squatted beside the fire, holding his steak in his
fingers. He gingerly sprinkled salt on the meat with the fingers of his other
hand, and bit into it. Several of the troops watched him, pausing in their own
struggles to cut the meat. He tore off a
piece with his teeth and chewed it.
Perri laid down her utensils. "I can do
it if he can!" She bit off a mouthful.
"See what I
mean?" Barra asked.
"I
don't approve of it, Barra. I've noticed other things, little things. The
troops are imitating some of his habits and mannerisms. If it goes too far, it
can lead to a serious breakdown in morale and discipline."
"Like what?" the
doctor wanted to know.
"Such
as the way he drinks. Have you noticed that the troops fall to the ground and
drink out o the steams now? They've watched him do it."
"Bosh. I do that
myself."
"When
he came to the fire tonight they made room for him. They didn't pull away from
him such as they used to when he approached—they simply made room for him and
stayed where they were. They're beginning to accept him."
"What's
wrong with that? After that episode this afternoon anyone would accept
him."
"Yes
. . ." Zee stared at his body against the fire. "Barra ... as a doctor . . . what can't that man
do? Isn't there any limit?" She whirled on the doctor. "And don't
tell me that
was in your report!"
"No, nothing like that." Barra picked up a piece of meat and
attempted to bite it off. "I was afraid of that. My teeth won't
stand the strain." She continued sawing it. "He fits Crane's
Theory."
"And what in the
Queen's name is Crane's Theory?"
"A
branch of the medical profession—there isn't a better name for it yet. Several
years back, Doctor Crane — you wouldn't know her—published a paper on the shape
of things, of life, a theory on the difference between the species. I know, I
know," Barra cut Zee off quickly,
"that isn't making sense to you. Bear with me; I'm not up on the fine
points of the Theory. Who could be
stuck off in the wilderness thousands of miles from the Home Isles?"
"But what is Crane's
Theory?"
"It's
a paper several hundred pages long, that's what it is. I read it once, all of
it. And what I remember of it can be put down on two pages." She popped
another bit of meat in her mouth. "You've been around on the continent,
and up and down this coast, and you know that
everywhere you travel, people are different. Some black, some white, some with
dark hair, some with light, some red like yours. Blue eyes,
brown eyes, gray eyes ... what have
you. I've seen people with six fingers on each hand, seen others who
fall sick everytime the wind changes and some who
live through plagues. That's Cranes' Theory: people, how and why they differ,
and when.
"Crane
thinks the differences are in the bloodstream and the physical properties of
the body, that the peculiarities of the parents are passed
along to the child—sometimes."
"Sometimes?"
"Sometimes — not always with certain peculiarities, and again
always with other properties. Those sixfingered people, for instance. The
entire tribe possess six fingers, all the children
and all the adults. Now here's the meat of the Theory: that tribe will always
have six fingers until someone with five fingers marries into it. The
fivefingered woman's child will have either five or six fingers, all depending
on which parent has the strongest peculiarities to pass along. If the bloodstream
and bodily makeup of the woman is the most powerful, the child will be born
with five fingers. On the other hand, if the father is internally dominant, the
child will have six fingers no matter what."
"But why didn't it
spread to other tribes?"
"That's
what I'm coming to; that's where Wolf fits in. Crane says that barriers
prohibit interchanging. Those sixfingered people live in a remote and highly
inaccessible part of the continent—they are difficult to rea.ch. The barrier
there is the great distance. That brings us to the seacoast natives. They
aren't at all like the people at home—the ocean is a tremendous barrier, and
the natives have developed their own bodies without outside interference. In
fact, they are between two barriers, and there is no interchanging.
"They are different from us, the
mountain men are different from them, and people living here on the plains—like
Wolf are far different from the first two. It so happens, because of the
favorable weather conditions and mode of life, that Wolf is the superior of all
the types. Zee, you may not like this, but he is as superior to our people, as
we are to the coastal natives."
"I don't"
"You
don't believe it yet, no, despite what you've seen. But you will, Zee, you
will."
"But
he's only a native!" she disclaimed, staring at the meat he held in his
fingers.
"Ummm. What is a native? Give me a
definition."
"Barra,
that's simple. A native is a person you find living in a new land."
Barra
nodded, a sly twisted grin on her lips., "That'll do. Now, look at it from
Wolf's viewpoint: this
is his land. So what are
our people who live across the sea—in a new land to him?"
"Well . . • natives, I suppose."
"That's
right; we're each native to our own country. Which brings us
right hack to Crane. Which is superior, the native of the plains here,
or the natives of the Isles?"
"We are. Barra, this
is foolishness."
"We
are in one sense: we're educated." She picked out a piece of gristle and
cast it away. "But what can fee do that we can't?"
"A few things, I
suppose."
The doctor grunted. "A few things, you
suppose. Like being able to stay alive without cloti.ing, like running as fast
as a horse, like knowing your unspoken thoughts, like living to be one or two
hundred years of age. Zee, sometimes you're so blind you disappoint me!"
The
captain didn't answer. She was studying Wolf, watching the troops around him.
A dozen or more were now eating their meat with their fingers. It revolted her,
but she felt it was the last straw when she discovered Lieutenant Donn doing
the same. She averted her head from the scene around the fire, looked upward at
the stars.
Finally, thoughtfully, she
broke the small silence.
"Barra .
. . what would happen if—if one of our women mated with a man such as
Wolf?" Her face was without emotion, held that way with some effort.
"Would their children be able to outrun a horse, or—"
"No.
No such luck. Not even if his blood was the dominant of the two, and I strongly
suspect it is." She glanced at the captain. "Let's suppose that one
of those troopers had a child by the man." She saw Zee wince "Crane
would say that the child would be tall because both parents were, would have
blue eyes if the
woman had them, because his certainly are. But that is only the external
physical angle like the sixfingered people.
"But
the child would not live to be two hundred, or run as fast as a horse, or know
others' thoughts. Those things aren't inherited that quickly—it requires
several generations. Given favorable 'conditions, and by that I mean simply
that child would mate with a similar child, it's quite possible that their
grandchildren, or their greatgrandchildren would be
the equal of Wolf today." She spread her hands. "Or at least,
according to Crane's Theory they would."
Zee
thought about it. "If we accept that, then there could be other kinds of life out here."
Barra slapped her oh the Tack. "By the Queen's tooth, Zee, you're
not as blind as I thought. I wondered if that would occur to you. Crane's
Theory doesn't apply to woman alone. It also includes birds, beasts, insects and, for all I know, snakes. Listen to the birds
calling, Zee." She paused. "Ever heard calls like that before? No,
you haven't." She held aloft a piece of meat. "Before today had you
ever seen a horse as small as this one? No. Or that piglike
creature somebody shot several days ago? No."
"Nor
a man like Wolf," Zee supplied.
Barra
grinned in the darkness, but her voice carried no trace of it. "No. The
ocean was the first great barrier, and those mountains back there the second.
Zee, if we can put any faith at all in Crane, be
prepared for anything out here. Anything at all! The people and animals living
here have probably been doing so for thousands of years, undisturbed. For all
we know, Zee, tens or hundreds of thousands of years. We don't know how they
came here, how long they've been here, and above all, we don't know the
pressures and forces that've been put on them here:
So Be prepared for anything."
"You
sound," Zee said hesitantly, "as though you expected others. Other people."
"Come
now, Zee. Wolf just didn't spring from the ground fully grown. He had to have a
father and mother."
"Well, yes."
"And the scar on his back was put there
by some enemy other than a father or a mother. So there must be others."
"Yes."
"Then be prepared for
them, Zee."
Absently,
Zee swung her eyes to check on the sentries. They were invisible in the
darkness of the night.
Wolf
stood up from the fire, and Zee's eyes came back to
him. He turned, putting his back to the fire, and looked at her briefly. She dropped her gaze.
He picked his way through
the group sitting around the fire and disappeared into the night. "He does
that every night' Zee said. "Does what?"
, "Checks my sentries. I followed him
one night to see what he was doing. He made a complete round of the sentry
posts, stopped near each one of them and stood staring out across the prairie.
And then he would pass on to the next one. He does that half the night—he never
sleeps until just a few hours before sunrise."
"Best lookout you've got, I'd say."
Zee nodded agreement. "He is. But I
wonder what it is he looks for out there?"
'Barra shrugged. "His
wife, maybe."
"Barra! Do you think he had a—" She stopped
suddenly.
The
doctor picked bits of meat from her teeth and neglected to answer.
Zee started to address a remark to %
the corporal but found her gone. She leaned against the wagon wheel and fell to
watching the lieutenant at the fire.
"Fine night," Barra said, and got
up to walk away in it.
Zee's train of thought drifted. It was a
wonderful, pleasant night, comparable to some of the evenings she had spent in
the Home Isles. Certainly there had been nothing like it in the Colony. There
had been no rain since before the first tunnel;
it
the
days had been bright and hot to a point where the heat had been almost
uncomfortable, and all the nights had been pleasantly warm like this one, warm
and lazy and serene. It might just possibly touch on the barbaric, but it was keen living to spend nights in the open as they had been doing. The
troops liked it—there had been no grumbling this side of the tunnels.
The food wasn't always as plentiful as at home, and to
night's
meat not all that it could be, still there was a zest to the night, to the
journey.
That
had been a remarkable thing Wolf had done—to leap up from the grass and shout,
to stampede the little horses, to—. She sat up straight, startled. He had
leaped up and shouted. Shouted. But Wolf had no
voice—at least he had never used it. That was ridiculous, he must have a voice,
everyone had a voice. But until this afternoon he had
never made use of it
She jumped to her feet.
He was gone somewhere,
probably checking sentries.
"Barra!"
"Over here."
Zee hurried that way.
"Barra,
when you examined the man, did he have the physical ability to talk? I mean, his throat...?"
"What?
Oh! Well, yes, there was nothing wrong with his throat."
"And yet you reported
he was unable to talk."
The
doctor corrected her. "I reported that he didn't understand the mother
tongue; he couldn't or wouldn't use his voice; he never tried to speak to me.
What else was I to think? It was a natural supposition. What's troubling
you?"
"Barra,
he used his voice this afternoon. When he routed the little horses—he yelled at
them."
"By the saints, he did at that!"
Barra moved her hand to her throat to massage the muscles there. "He
did."
"He
made fools of us, Barra. Deliberately tricked us."
She whirled to the group at the fire, called an angry, "Corporal!"
"Now
don't be hasty, Zee. I wouldn't say he has tricked anybody. After all, why
should he use his voice?"
"Why
should he? Barra, what do you think a . . ." She
stopped, staring at the doctor.
"That's right," Barra filled in for
her. "A voice is for communication when there is no other way. Wolf has
another way."
"Oh, that again! Corporal!" "Yes, that again."
Someone shouted, "Not here,
Captain."
Barra offered, "I saw her a little while ago. She went back that way, after she finished
eating."
"Never
mind," Zee declared. "I'll find Wolf myself. I want an explanation of
this matter." She pushed angrily off into the darkness toward the nearest
sentry post. The doctor stood looking after her.
Captain
Zee made a complete round of the sentry posts to learn from each of them that
the man had not been there since darkness fell, that none of them had seen him.
She returned to the fire, organized a squad and made a thorough search of the
camp. Wolf was not there, not in camp, not in the defense perimeter defined by
the outlying sentry posts. He was gone.
The
search turned up a byproduct. Corporal Avon was likewise absent.
Doctor
Barra rubbed her nose and tried to recall previous evenings. She found nothing
to support her suspicions, and filed the matter away under the heading of mild
curiosity.
Captain Zee was another matter.
She doubled the watches, with strict orders
that the missing pair were to be brought to her under arrest as soon as they
could be found. And then she spread her bedroll under a wagon near the fire, to
await them. She was still waiting when she fell asleep, still waiting when the
next morning's sun roused the camp to activity.
Wolf and the corporal were gone.
Seven
They
broke camp and marched
westward, furious. >
'I’ll
hang them, Barra," she said savagely to the doctor. "Hanging is the
punishment for deserters!"
"You
may hang the girl' Barra replied mildly, "but you'll never touch the
man."
"Oh, won't I!"
"No,
I have an idea you won't. He probably won't be in sympathy with the idea."
"Barra, I command this
troop."
"Granted. But you don't command him. Haven't you learned that yet?"
Zee
said nothing. She paused once on the brow of a hill to search the terrain behind
them, to look one last time for a trace of the missing pair. There was nothing
but trampled grass, nothing but the ashes of the fire. A strong wind blew
across the plain. She continued down the opposite slope of the hill and last
night's camp site was lost to her.
"The
troops are talking, Barra," she said after a while. "Ugly talk."
"If
you're suggesting a possible liaison between Wolf and the girl—yes, they're
talking about that. But I'm fraid no one agrees with
your definition of it. Te them it's a ribald joke—to me, it's a matter of
professional speculation. Frankly, I see nothing ugly about it."
"But, Barra .. . one of my troops. And a native!"
"The
sooner you stop thinking of him as a native and began te think of him as a man, the sooner you'll find a
bit of peace of mind, Zee. Military training has made a hidebound reactionary
of you. He's a man. And as I pointed out, the likes of which we've never seen
before. I don't blame the girt for being overwhelmed."
"Barra, you aren't
condoning desertion?" r "No, I'm not." She stumbled
in the tall grass and mumbled a phrase under her breath. "I'm not talking
about desertion—that's another matter. But I don't blame the corporal for being
caught by his personality. I am myself." She turned her eyes on the captain.
"And so are you."
"I
am not!" !
"Oh, fiddle."
They
marched in silence, hearing only the sound of the rising wind through the
trees and grass, the creaking of the wagons. The rear guard topped the rise in
ground and the campsite was behind the troop. Like the captain before her, one
of the guard glanced back and saw nothing. Someone
else made a suggestion, and the guard laughed. They marched down the hill.
By
the time the overhead sun brought the troop to a stop for the noonday meal, the
wind had climbed to a terrific intensity. Sudden gusts of it lashed at the
troop, tore at the canvas coverings on the wagons and threatened to tear them
to ribbons. In the far distance a huge bird beat against the wind, struggling
for some unseen sanctuary. Zee watched the horizon anxiously, looking for the
ominous cloud gatherings that preceded storms, storms she had not experienced
since leaving the Home Isles. There had been no great storms along the coast,
and years of living in the dull, grey peaceful climate had softened her,
weakened her resistance to the terror of them.
In
midafternoon the sky began to darken too early, and she realized what was
coming.
They were on the open prairie without shelter
of any kind except the few occasional trees. She urged the troop on, pushing
them faster into the waning western light, hoping to find some haven from the
brewing storm. The horses exhibited a nervousness
she had not seen in them before.
"We are in for it,
Barra."
Barra unbuckled her raincoat. "We are. I
almost hate to put this thing on again." She looked toward the horizon,
pointed. "Zee, see those big birds? We might go that way. There's bound to
be shelter of some sort there."
"There's
merit in the suggestion, Barra." She shouted an order, and someone ran
forward to turn the points. The entire column slowly pivoted south toward the
birds. "They look big from here, don't they? Surely they have adequate
shelter of some sort from these storms."
Zee
pushed them rapidly south, hut premature darkness and the first stinging drops
of rain caught them still in the open, while the wind whirled in a mad uproar
around them. Coats were buckled on, and the deluge began. The points were
forced to wait until the wagons caught up and the rear guard came in closer,
afraid of losing contact altogether in the lowered visibility. Zee ordered the
extra hostlers to walk beside their teams, half leading them, for the booming
thunder and glaring flashes of lightning made the animals skittish and hard to
manage. She was afraid they might bolt.
"Even the saints have
deserted us, Barra. This is terrible."
The
doctor didn't answer. She fought against the storm with her face lowered,
bracing herself to the gusts of wind that threatened to hurl her off her feet.
Finally she gave up walking in the open and found a place behind the first
wagon, holding on to the tailgate for safety.
Zee
ranged the outer boundaries of the troop, first with the flanks and then at
point, searching continually for anything that offered shelter. The rain soaked
through her clothing, wetting her to the kin. Stumbling through the grass she
suddenly collided with a trooper.
"Keep
out of the way, chicken," the trooper shouted. "I got to find the
captain."
"I'm the
captain."
The trooper stiffened.
"Yes, Captain. There's something
ahead, Captain. Trees or
buildings or something." Zee followed her forward.
The black and undefined outlines of some
shapeless mass rose up from the prairie ahead, only half seen in the beating
rain and the darkened sky. Zee unsheathed her sword and pushed on. In an hour
they had reached the mass and crowded into the miserable shelter it offered.
The outlines so barely discernible had
resolved themselves into building walls, buildings which were not whole and
walls which sagged and in many places had fallen in upon themselves, but they
offered a barrier against the weather. The hori lers turned the wagons about and backed them against the
doorways of the first few outlying buildings, to unhitch the teams and lead
them inside. Troopers crowded in after them and spread to a half dozen nearby
buildings.
"Lieutenant!"
"Yes, Captain?"
"Send a patrol into the town—see if you
can determine the size of it and if anything lives here."
"Yes, Captain."
Zee posted guards at the
windows, doors, and the gaping holes in the walls; others were already
spreading their bed rolls in the inner rooms.
"What do you make of it, Barra?"
"I don't know, don't know. It doesn't
look much like a house. Who would build a house this big?".
"The
roadway was large," the captain reminded her. "Those tunnels were
oversize."
"Well,
maybe the builders of the roof had a good reason for driving six teams abreast,
but that hardly applies here. I can't imagine humans so tall they'd need rooms this size."
"Perhaps you had
better ask your friend Crane."
Barra studied the woman.
"Perhaps you'd better get some rest; you're pushing yourself to
exhaustion. Although' she added' humorously with a glance at the ceiling,
"we might
be able to show Crane a
thing or two." "I hope not," Zee retorted nervously.
She
made another tour of the building, and then dashed next door to check on the
troops there. The patrol reported in while she was poking through the rooms of
the third building taken over by the troops.
"Find anything?"
she asked quickly.
"No,
Captain. Nothing but those birds—didn't see them,,
just heard them fluttering around. We went in about a half mile. There's
nothing but these old buildings. They get bigger, farther in, Captain."
"Did you make an
estimate of the size of the town?"
"No,
Captain. We never reached the end—I don't think we even reached the middle. The
town just spreads out in all directions. All in ruins, too, Captain."
"No other living
thing?"
"Nothing
but those birds, Captain. They were roosting up in the tall buildings down that way—" The
trooper pointed a laconic finger. "But—"
"But
what?"
Zee snapped.
"Well, Captain,
something looked queer about those buildings . . . they weren't exactly
falling apart from old age if you know what I mean."
"I don't know what you
mean!" She. frowned.
"Captain—it's
just, well . . . Well take this place for instance. You can see why it's a mess, there just isn't anyone around to keep it in repair.
The weather did all this, sort of. But some of these big buildings inside are
different. It didn't look like the weather wrecked them."
"What did it look
like?"
"I don't know, Captain." The
trooper groped helplessly for words. "I can't describe it. But look—if I
could pick up a stone as big as a horse and throw it through a wall . . . well,
that's what it was like, Captain."
"Are you suggesting a bombardment of
some sort?"
"Yes,
Captain. But I don't know of ihy weapon big enough to
wreck a wall, or knock down the top of a building.'
Zee stared at the trooper. She didn't know
either.
The rain and the wind were dead by dawn. Zee
tramped out into the mud of the street and stared at the town. She found the
doctor there ahead of her.
Barra
was staring, transfixed, at some point about a quarter of a mile away.
"How does it look, Barra?"
The
doctor turned a whitened face toward the captain. "You're in for another
jolt, Zee."
"What!" She whirled to stare down
the street.
"Look up," Barra urged her,
"up on that rooftop."
Zee
looked, seemed to stagger backward and rubbed her eyes. Unconsciously her hand
slid toward her weapon. She remained in that position, frozen by shock.
The
winged creature stood quietly on a roof ledge, watching them,
"The birds . . . the birds we saw last
night?" Barra nodded. "It must be. Remember how large they
were?"
"But Barra, such a thing as that can't
be . . . can't be . . ."
"It
is. Or should I say, he is." She pursed herjips.
"Zee, unless you and I are both crazy, there stands a man with wings.
Mother of saints, what wings!"
"A
man can't have wings!" Zee made a motion wth her hund as if to deny the
sight. "It just can't be."
"It
is. I saw him fly there. I was looking down
toward the town and he came flying over the rooftops.
He is a man with wings, Zee. Accept it."
The captain refused to accept it. She saw
him, knew he was there, but refused to accept the idea. Her hand stayed on the
hilt of her weapon. Nothing she had found on the journey thus far had prepared
her for the. startling
sight, even though the discoveries of that first week in the wilderness had
shaken her time and again from her complacency.
"Barra . . . how can a thing like that
live?"
"I don't know," Barra answered, not
taking her eyes from the creature. "And I mean it in a different sense. A
man would need a backbone like a horse to support wings such as those, he would
need muscles . . . oh, I don't know. I wish I had him on my operating
table!"
Someone ran up behind them, breathless.
"Captain, there's a—" The trooper suddenly stopped. "Oh, there's
another one of them."
"There are more?"
Zee demanded, half turning.
"Three of them, Captain. Sitting back there watching us. Queer looking things,
Captain."
Barra turned to her, struggling to control
her emotions. "They exist all right," she said dryly. "We can't
all be crazy." She motioned to the trooper. "Lead on, girl." And followed the trooper around the corner of the building.
Three more of the men with wings were gathered on a rooftop, watching the
activity below them.
There was no real activity. The troops were
rooted to the ground, motionless, watching the trio on the roof. A hostler led
one of the teams through the doorway into the street, and the rooftop exploded
into violent motion. The hostler froze with the astonished stillness of her
companions at what she saw, but the men on the roof danced with strange excitement
at the horses; Without warning one of them launched himself into the air with a gigantic beat of his wings, and floated silently toward them.
"Steady!" Barra warned the group.
"Don't mob him, he's friendly."
No
one moved. The man came to rest lightly on the ground a hundred feet distant
and folded his wings. Barra stared at them, noted the lower tips reached to his
heels and seemed to fold around his body without dragging. They were a pale,
cream color. After a few moments one of the men who had remained on the rooftop
leaped into the air, flying away toward the center of town. The third remained
where he was, watchful.
Lieutenant Donn spoke up. "The horses—he
wants to see the horses!"
"Lead the team out to
him," Barra suggested.
Donn looked at the captain for confirmation
but found her superior officer was oblivious to all but the man en the ground.
She took the reins from the unresisting fingers of the hostler and started
forward.
"Slowly now," Barra whispered.
"Don't scare him."
Donn covered the ground between them in a
slow walk. The man watched her approach warily, glancing from her to the team.
When there was but a scant five feet between them, she stopped and moved aside.
The winged man hesitated, watching the
lieutenant and her hands, darting glances at the weapon hanging at her side.
And then he reached out for the reins. Impulsively, Donn handed them to him. He
backed away, pulling the team, until he had put another dozen feet between him
and the girl. He stopped then, and stepped in close to the team, to run his
hands over their chests and forelegs, examining their strength. He was openly
pleased at what he found.
Raising his head, he looked briefly at his
companion on the roof, and that one spread his wings to float down beside the
team. The two of them began a minute examination of the horses.
When they appeared to have finished, Donn
said, "Satisfied?"
They
stared at her, surprised and curious. "You like the horses? There was no
answer. "Can't you talk?"
The
bolder of the two slowly approached her and stared at her lips.
"I said," Donn
repeated, "can't you talk?"
He glanced from her lips to
her eyes, delighted.
"No,
I suppose you can't. But you like the sound of it, don't you?"
He
appeared fascinated by the movement of her lips and the sounds they made.
Briefly he moved his own in a poor imitation, but nothing came forth.
"You evidently don't have the right equipment, man. You and
our late friend, Wolf."
He
looked away from her lips and darted a glance over her shoulder, to back
quickly away. Donn looked around to find Barra coming up behind her. "They
can't talk, doctor."
"No
vocal chords," Barra explained. "Or if they have them, they've never
used them." She opened her arms wide in what she hoped was a peaceful
gesture. "I'm not going to hurt you. Come back."
He came back slowly, noting the absence of
weapons on the doctor.
"Can
you imagine this!" the lieutenant exclaimed. "My grandmother told me
some fancy stories, but she never told me anything like this."
"They're
something new on the face of the earth—or at least new to us." Barra tried
to peer around him at his wings. "We're apt to find anything this side of
the mountains, Donn. I tried to make Zee understand that, but I don't think I
succeeded. Those little horses yesterday were only the beginning;
different races and different species have evolved
here. We would call them freaks at home because they only happen once in fifty
years, but this is different." I’ll say they're different."
"What I'm trying to say," Barra
replied, "is that life follows different patterns under different
conditions. And sometimes forces you can't foresee and often can't understand
turn life into altogether new channels. Here—suppose the Home Isles were
suddenly flooded, dropped a foot so under water. Do you know what might
happen?"
"We'd drown fast."
"No, not everyone, not the entire population. The stronger would survive. Suppose the
continent wasn't reachable, and the survivors had to stay there, living in a
foot of water. They'd take to boats, build rafts, begin
swimming. And per• haps—just perhaps, you understand—after a few hundred years
the descendants of .those survivors might have webbed feet or fins like fish,
to enable them to live in the water. If life survives at all, it adapts itself
to its surroundings or is adapted by those surroundings."
She pointed to the stranger. "I'm not
saying these people grew wings to stay alive, not at all. But away back in
their past something could have happened to change their bodies. They may have
been as normal as you and I, and a catastrophe of some unimaginable sort may
have altered their body patterns. Children can be born with one eye or none at
all, or with four arms instead of two. If that sort of thing continues over a
period of years, eventually the entire race would be molded in the same
pattern."
Donn jerked her eyes to the sky. "These
did. Look at what's coming!"
Hundreds of the winged men were descending
upon them, filling the air with the queer rustling of their wings. Faces on the
ground followed their flight. They came in large groups from somewhere in the
town to hover over the roadway above the troops and horses, and finally to
settle to the ground a safe distance away. All eyes were on the team.
"We don't excite them half as much as
the horses." "I don't understand that," Barra admitted, studying
them. "I should think our lack of
wings would cause talk."
"Perhaps
people without wings aren't so strange to them." "You could be right
. . .Oh, so right!"
.
The newcomers held their distance, staring at the team. One of the two men
beside the horses picked up the reins and led them out to the group. His
companions waited near them, still watching in fascination the movement of
their mouths.
"Do you know' Barra said thoughtfully, "if they've seen people without wings before us, those others certainly
couldn't talk." She advanced a few slow steps. "Friend, I want to
feel those wings." She put out a hand.
He glanced down at it expectantly, flicked an
inquisitive look at her face and after a moment extended his own. Barra touched
hands with his, gripped his fingers and moved closer. He held his ground,
cautious and watchful. Very slowly the doctor reached around his bare arm to
put a tentative finger on the nearer wing. He made no objection. Boldly then
she stepped to his side and placed the full weight of her hand on the
appendage. Ife only turned his head so as to watch both her and the lieutenant
at the same time. Barra smiled at him and lost herself in an examination of the
wing and supporting muscles.
After
a few moments he spread the wings away from his body, partly extending them
into the air. The amazed doctor watched the ripple running under the skin of
his back.
"In the name of the First Queen, Donn! Those wing muscles extend all the way down
into his legs. I wish I could determine his weight—his body has to be
light!"
The man jumped in alarm. Barra looked up,
peering past him. The lieutenant was approaching.
"Put
down your weapons first' Barra suggested. "He
doesn't quite trust you."
The
lieutenant carefully unbuckled the sword and placed it on the ground; then,
with hands outstretched she came up to him to put a finger on his wing.
Barra
chuckled. "The entire company will be up here before you know it. They
can't stand there like stone forever."
"Not
all at once, I hope. It wouldn't do to have the troop without their
weapons."
The
next move required hours to convey,
but by noon Captain Zee understood what was wanted, examined the risks of the
transaction as compared to the probable value, and gave in. The winged people
wanted the team. In exchange they offered and delivered more green vegetables
than the three wagons could possibly transport. They piled the stuff in a huge pile in the middle of the street, while one of their number clung possessively to the reins of
the horses.
"Why
in the world do they want horses?" Zee asked in wonder. "We can use
the food, but what use would they have for
horses?"
Barra examined the vegetables. "I'll
make a guess. If they can afford to offer all this,
they have a sizable field of vegetables somewhere. And:
with a team they can plow a still larger field."
"Perhaps so. But still, men with wings
wanting horses. It sounds ridiculous."
"Ridiculous pr not,
I'd make the swap if I were you."
The
captain did. She also included in the exchange a request to explore the town. She would have sent a party into town in any event, but her military training and caution told
her that it would be wisest to do so under official approval. Taking
Perri,
the doctor and a sizable guard, she penetrated to a point she believed to be
the center of the place.
The buildings were as the trooper had
attempted to explain the previous night. Some of them were quite high, so high
that they surprised her because she could think of no reasonable explanation for
the height. But the more startling fact about them was that many had been
partially knocked down as if by bombardment.
The buildings were old, incredibly old, and
many were falling apart under their own weight. A few seemed newer and in
better condition, and it was in these that the winged natives lived, high off
the ground. Climbing vines and greenery covered them all, growing in the
crevices where the walls had tumbled down, growing right through the huge holes
that had been knocked in others. Thick green moss blanketed the northerly
walls. Nowhere did she see signs of reconstruction or even minor repairs, and
concluded that the winged dwellers lacked the knowledge. No other signs of life
were evident, no scavengers or rodents. The streets were rubblestrewn
and empty of movement.
Perri made the discovery. Her eyes were trained
for such finds.
"Look,
Captain!" and she excitedly pointed out a halfburied
cornerstone. "An inscription." She ran her
hand over the stone to clear away the vegetation.
Zee bent to read it, without success.
"Can you read it?" she demanded of
the archeologist.
"No, Captain." Perri was on her
knees, tracing the strange lettering with a finger. "I've never seen
lettering such as this before."
"Those are numbers there—undoubtedly a date
of some kind: 1937.
Does that mean
anything?"
"I don't know, Captain. Numbers such as
these have been found on the continent, too, but no one knows what they
mean."
"They
have, really ?" Barra interposed. "Perri, do
you mean that these people and the continental people spoke the same
language?"
"Not
necessarily, doctor. This lettering is not like any I've seen in other places. Only the numbers."
"But
wouldn't identical numbering systems indicate a common source?"
"Yes—something
like that. But as close to the Big Continent as the Home Isles are, we've never
used this system."
"Ummm." Barra stooped closer. "What could this 1937 mean, do you think?"
It
is probably the month or the year—" Perri broke off to study the solidness
of the building—"the year this structure was built. Judging by the few
finds on the Big Continent, authorities believe the ancient builders put dates
on these stones for that purpose." She traced the numerals with a finger. "But as to just what these four figures mean—I don't know.
It might have been one of the years of the reign of the First Queen ... or it might have been a hundred years earlier. I don't know."
Zee stepped back to stare up at the building,
noting the obvious age of it.
"This
1937 year must have been a long time ago,"
she softly commented.
Perri
nodded in agreement, sensing her mood. "A very long time
ago, Captain. If we knew some reliable method of measuring
the age. of stone under weather, we could make
a close guess. Notice though that the structures made of stone are in better
condition than those of brick."
"Stronger?"
"Or
more recent," Perri explained. "Perhaps both, of
course. I think the brick structures belonged to an earlier race or an
inferior race—natives or perhaps slaves. Either a
later race or a superior race built their dwellings of stone. I'm certain,
however, that both types existed together." "Why do you say
that?"
"Because both types died together, Captain. I mean, both brick and stone went through the same
destruction at the same time. Whatever the destruction was that came to them. Both types of buildings were standing side by side, both
took identical blows, and the stone was the stronger survivor."
Barra
shook her head with a vague sense of unease. "I wouldn't want to be here,
wouldn't want to' see it. What kind of a thing—what imaginable kind of a weapon
can cause destruction like this?"
Perri
shrugged. "I don't know, Doctor. I wish I did. I wish we had it."
The doctor glanced at her,
frowning.
Zee spoke up. "That strange scar on
Wolf's back . . . Could there be any connection with this bombardment?"
There was no answer.
Eight
THE troop moved westward shortly after
sunrise.
Zee
counted the previous day as lost. She held but the vaguest of notions where
they were going, had nothing more than a shimmering image of their goal, had no
concrete plan of action or single direction of movement beyond movement, but still the idleness of the previous day
annoyed her.
The
wagons moved out loaded with green vegetables, and the spare team remained
behind, while a silent horde of swift flying men kept them company overhead.
In all her life Zee had never known the strange sensation of first seeing those
creatures, of finding a silent, deserted city lying dead under the sun—but yet
she counted the day lost. In the arranged orderliness of her mind a schedule
was something to be kept, even though that schedule was a tentative thing which
existed only in her imagination.
In the wealth of pleasant and shocking
sensations she had accumulated as she grew older, she remembered particularly
her first days in military service, the first days on shipboard staring at the
vast expanse. f the western ocean, the first glimpse of .the Colony and the
quick exploration of it, and even the dull realization after a while that it
was something less desirable than she had first thought. The newer sensations
were the discovery of the stray and his intelligence; yes, even the tunnels.
But now the winged men and the vanquished city topped all others, held her
imagination enthralled. Still, it was a day lost.
She pushed the troops deeper into the west.
And she cursed the absence of Wolf and the
corporal.
Several days after leaving the city behind,
the scouts reached a wide river and halted. Zee put her military mind to work
on a new problem, a problem which she had never before encountered but one
which had been taught in the Isles.
The troopers cut down trees, stripped them of
branches and lashed the denuded poles to the wagons. Then, after the scouts had
swum the river and taken up their vigil on the opposite bank, the hostlers
urged the horses into the water and floated the wagons across. It was a slow,
careful operation because the current was strong, and it would have been a
minor disaster to lose a wagon. The first landed on the other bank a halfmile downstream, and the team was unhitched and brought
back upstream in case it should be needed to assist the following wagon.
In midafternoon the operation had been
completed, and Zee called a halt for camp, utilizing several hours of hot sunlight
for the troops to strip and dry their clothing.
Barra stepped out of her garments and' spread
them on the grass to dry.
"Zee," she questioned with a
straight face, "what would we do if Wolf were here?" "Barra!"
"Well—what would we do," Lieutenant
Donn laughed. "I know what I'd do." ,
"Lieutenant—have you checked the sentries?" Sharply.
"Like this,
Captain
?"
Zee
turned her back without answering, to stare across the plain behind them.
Donn
caught the doctor's eye and winked. She lazily stretched her arms, offering her
bare stomach to the sun. "I like the feel of this."
Barra
grinned at her. "All we need now is one of those winged men to come flying
over."
The lieutenant shrugged.
"They were naked."
"And
thought nothing of it," the doctor supplemented. "It all depends on
how you were brought up. We cover ourselves with clothing and force the coastal
natives to do likewise. And after fifty years of that, they would feel shame if
they weren't covered. But their grandfathers didn't mind."
"They were
savages," Zee retorted.
"Wolf
isn't." And she added hastily, "I know, I know, he wore breeches at
least."
The captain replied with
one low word.
"I
wish he had stayed around, nevertheless. I wanted to learn more about that man
Say—I'll wager he could have told us something about that city."
"Do you know," the lieutenant
offered, "I've been giving that place a lot of thought. The particular
kind of destruction there puzzles me, but still I'm interested in it. Why couldn't
a great battering ram of some sort have tumbled those walls?"
"The holes were high
up," Barra reminded her.
"Yes, there's that. A battering ram
wouldn't reach. But „ . . but,
Doctor, suppose it was something other than a battering ram ? Suppose it were
possible to construct an instrument which would hurl stones . . . hurl weights
over a long distance? The weapon could be mounted in a field outside of town
and bombard the inner buildings with stones or weights."
"What kind of a weapon
would do that?"
"I
don't know of course. A giant bow wouldn't do it, but there might be something
on the same principle. If my arm can hurl a spear, why could not a weapon hurl
a stone?"
"I wouldn't want to
see it," the doctor said.
"No?"
Donn paused in thought. "It would be a dirty business, I'll grant you. And frightfully demoralizing."
"Too
much so," Barra said quietly. "Consider the present condition of that
city."
"Yes . . . Quite
dead."
"Perri believes the winged people simply
found it and moved in. They didn't build it." "No?"
"No.
If you could fly, you would have no use for streets or stairways."
"That's
so. I wonder why the rooms were so large and the buildings so unreasonably
high?"
"The original inhabitants could tell
you." "But where are they?"
"Dead," Barra said unemotionally.
"Oh carried
away. Perhaps the winged men are their descendants." "How or why did
they get wings?"
"I
haven't the slightest idea. But I marvel at the bodies which support those
wings. They are an outgrowth of the shoulder, did you notice? There is
tremendous strength in the backbone and a network of muscles reaching well down
toward the knee. I suspect they utilize chest and abdominal muscles as well,
but I had no opportunity to find out. Their bodies are completely designed to
support and lift the wings, and there might be a weakness elsewhere. In the arms, perhaps. Your strength is in your arm for
fighting; theirs could be in the wings alone."
At
sundown, Zee put on her uniform and made the rounds of the sentries.
She spread her bedroll beside a wagon wheel
and lay on her back counting the. stars. The fire had
been banked for the night and most of the troops were asleep, their still forms spread out on the ground around the camp.
A great copper moon was rising in the sky as she dropped off to sleep.
A
sudden hand on her shoulder brought her to her feet with sword in hand.
"Please, Captain—quietly !"
"What is it?" She
stared into the trooper's face.
"Something
moving, Captain. Out on the plain."
"Where?"
"There, to the
west."
They
stole across the camp toward the west, quietly working their way forward
toward the sentries. A small group of women waited there in the grass, weapons
ready.
"What is it?" Zee
whispered.
"I
can't tell, Captain. We saw several things moving, small things—there! There
they are, Captain!" The girl pointed.
Zee
narrowed her eyes to see better in the bright moonlight. Presently she saw the
movement. The figures were small and they seemed to be five or six individuals,
but at that distance she was unable to see whether they were men or animals.
They looked white beneath the moon, and as she stared hard, she fancied they
walked upright on two legs. But they were small, too small even when
considering the distance, if they were men.
"How long have they been there?"
"I
don't know, Captain. We discovered them only a space ago. Just before I
awakened you."
Zee
peered at the prancing figures. "I count five. Are there any others?"
"No,
Captain. I passed the word along to the other sentries. We should have their
reports quickly."
Zee turned her head to look back at the camp,
to see only the glowing coals and the white broadside of the canvas coverings.
"Our fire has attracted them. Have it
put, out." "Yes, Captain." The girl turned.
"Wait . . ." Zee put out a hand to
stop her. "Awaken half the troops and put them on guard. Let the rest
sleep." "Yes, Captain." She faded away behind.
Zee watched the moonlit plain in silence.
Around her new troopers crept into plac0 and stared out into the distance. From
behind came the faint muffled sounds of dirt being shoveled on the fire. Swords
clinked as they were withdrawn from their sheaths. A battery of archers moved
into a forward position just ahead of the sentry post.
A messenger came up. "Sentries report no
movement, Captain. Each post has been reinforced."
Zee nodded, forgetful that it could not be
seen. "They seem to be running about a good deal but I don't think they've moved in on us."
"No, Captain. They were at that same
distance when we first spotted them."
Lieutenant Donn moved up beside the watching
captain.
"All quiet on the
flanks and in the rear. What is it?"
"Out there," Zee
pointed. "Running figures. Small."
Donn stared. "By the saints, little men!"
"Men?" Zee strained her eyes.
"Yes, Captain. Naked
little men. The size of children." She
looked steadily. "Five of them."
"You
are sure?" ' "Yes, Captain. I
see Them quite clearly."
Abruptly
then there was a flash of light from the plain and, before they could catch
their breath, a booming noise. The figures had paused around something, and
while the troops watched they quickly took flight, running away into the distant
night.
"What was that?"
Zee demanded.
Donn shook her head in
wonderment.
The thunder from the plain had awakened the
entire camp, and armed troopers were running up. Zee waited patiently for the
reappearance of the figures, but they were gone. She grew stiff from the
crouching position in the grass and stood up to stretch,
measuring the distance the moon had moved through the sky.
"It
isn't likely they'll come back." She spoke to the lieutenant. "Half
the troops will remain on guard. The rest will turn in."
"Yes, Captain." .
Thoughtfully, Zee returned to her bedroll and stretched out. She did not sleep.
Nor
did she eat breakfast the next morning. She was unable to eat at all. She had
almost stepped on the body in the tall grass.
,
In the faint early light of the coming day, before the stillhidden
sun had broken the horizon, she and Lieutenant Donn went out to inspect the
scene of the night's visitors. They came upon the body quite unexpectedly,
frightening off tiny scavenging creatures intent upon
a meal. Zee jumped back in alarm, instantly ill at ease. Her next step would
have planted a foot on the thing's face. It lay on its back, dead and bleeding,
in the grass.
The body was of a pastywhite
male about four feet in height and hairless. The skin was remarkably devoid of
any coloration, having a uniform paleness the color of unbaked dough. It was
naked and had no hair whatsoever, no eyebrows or fuzz on the cheeks. Zee peered
down into the glassy, open eyes and felt her stomach rebel. The man's ears and
nose had Wed momentarily, but his death was undoubtedly caused by a gaping, raw
wound in his chest.
"Donn . . . what . . .
what ... ?"
The
lieutenant only shook her Head grimly. "That noise— the noise and the
flash of light last night. That caused this. But what was it?"
"I
do not know, Captain. It was a dirty thing, whatever it was."
"Barra
should see this." She forced her gaze away from the body and looked back
at the camp.
Donn
concealed the contemptuous thought from her face and offered patronizingly,
"I’ll stay with the body, Captain."
Zee half turned, and then cut off a tart
reply hanging on the tip of her tongue. In that halfcircling
motion her eyes had again sought and found the body at her feet. Without
answering she put her back to the scene and stalked across the prairie to the
camp.
The doctor trotted up
minutes later.
"Morning, Lieutenant.
Zee tells me you've made a find."
The
lieutenant grinned derisively. "The captain wishes she had not found it,
Doctor." She motioned downward.
"Zee has a soft—Mother
of saints!" Barra grew round eyed.
"I
put it a little more strongly than that," Don supplied. "I surprised
myself with what I said. Horrible looking creature, isn't he?"
"May
I use your knife?" The doctor dropped to her knees beside the body, to
probe the wound with the blade Lieutenant Donn offered. "Missed the heart
by a hair's breadth—no blade
or sword
did this. It must have been caused by the light and the noise last night."
Donn
nodded in agreement. "Another one of our unknown weapons . . . something
that discharges with light and thunder."
"I'm puzzled by the skin burns here—all
around the wound. The weapon drives something into the body,
and at the same time burns the skin area around it. Now,
why?"
"I can't guess, Doctor."
Reluctantly she moved away from the wound to
examine the head, nose and ears. "Pierced," she said presently.
"He wore rings or ornaments in his ears and nose. A jolly pack of friends
he had—they robbed the body while it was still alive." She continued her
exploration of the corpse. "This fellow can't be very old, and yet he seems
old. His body is mature, and yet tthink he
was comparatively young." She stopped and got to her feet, after carefully
wiping the blade on the grass.
"Hold that in the fire when we return to
camp." "Yes, Doctor. He has a dirty color, eh?" "The unhealthiest
specimen I've ever seen! And I fail to understand the lack of coloration out
here in this country.
0
Apparently
he went naked all the time and yet his skin . . • oh, well. Maybe he slept all day and worked at night."
Thoughtfully
she picked up a short stick and held it to Donn's breast.
"Suppose
this is a weapon. It gives off a flash of light and a crack of thunder. Now —
your body has a large hole in it, and the skin area around the hole is
burned—by the flash I suppose. What could cause that?"
The lieutenant didn't bother to answer.
"Oh, well," the doctor said again.
"Let's go back." She cast a backward
glance at the pale body.
Zee received her report in noncommittal silence,
the uneasy feeling still in possession of her stomach. She nodded, and continued
the job of breaking camp.
Midday
found them more than the usual distance from the night's camp. Zee believed,
not unreasonably, that the strange visitors would return on the following
night, and she wanted to be as far from the site as possible.
She
took off her jacket to expose her shoulders to the warming rays of the sun,
and noted with a small shock that most of the troops had done likewise.
Inspecting the skins of the nearest troops more closely, she came to the
surprised conclusion that they must have been half dressed for several days.
All wore dark tans of various shades. Zee opened her lips and then hesitated,
turning the matter over. What harm did it do? And why raise the issue now? They
had been out of uniform for many days, and she hadn't noticed it until now.
And besides, the sun was hot. Oh, let it go.
"Zee," the doctor said suddenly.
"Yes?"
"Remember the scar on Wolf's back?"
"Am I likely to forget it?"
"It might have been caused by last night's weapon. A near
miss."
Zee turned her head to the doctor. She too,
Zee noted absently, was only partially dressed. The doctor was wearing less
clothing than any of the troops.
"Is it possible?"
Barra nodded. "Why
not? They might be his enemies He dodged in time, and the flash of light
singed his back." She amended it. "Or rather, whatever is pushed into
the body by the weapon grazed his back."
"It wasn't caused by an arrow? A spear or a knife?"
"Definitely not. The wound was too large, too irregular. And whatever it was that
entered the body is still there; the nature of the organs and the skin about
the wound told me that nothing had been withdrawn."
"But you didn't find
anything in the body?"
"Nothing whatsoever. The death missile, of whatever nature,
vanished within the body."
Zee could think of no
comment.
"Speaking of Wolf," the doctor
continued after a while, "I wonder where he and the corporal are
now?" "Dead for all I care!"
"Oh, now, Zee, you don't mean
that." Barra waited, but the captain said nothing. "Because they
vanished together, we've assumed they are together. I wonder if we can be wrong? Would either of them return to the Colony
?"
"They'd be
hanged!"
"For what? They could concoct a fine tale, something to the effect that we were
all dead and they the sole survivors. But no"—she
shook her head in puzzlement—"I can't understand his going back when he
went to so much trouble to get us out here. For that matter, neither of them
had reason to leave camp, but they . . ." She let it hang there,
surprised.
"But they what?"
the captain picked it up.
Barra swung around to put a hand on Zee's
shoulder. "Do
you remember what we were discussing the night they de
serted? That night around the
fire?"
Zee searched her memory.
"No," she said finally.
"We
were talking about Crane's Theory. Remember? The corporal was near us, eating
on those tough little horse steaks and listening. Now let's see ... I was telling you about the sixfingered tribe and—Oh."
Zee repeated,
"Oh?"
"We were examining the possibilities of
the man mating with one of your troops."
Zee said in astonishment,
"Barra!"
'Yes," Barra nodded.
"The corporal was listening."
"But
Barra, not the corporal, not Don! I've known her for vears. She is ... is fastidious. She wouldn't think of
such a thing."
"Zee,"
the doctor reproved sadly, "what you don't know about your own troops would
file a report." Very briefly she glanced at Lieutenant Donn walking with
the troops on flank, and dropped her eyes. "You can't know."
"Oh,
but surely, not that—that stray!"
Barra
rubbed her chin. "No—I don't think so. At least, she was not placed in an
embarrassing position because of him. We had known him only two weeks at that
time, remember? And we had been on the march but one. That isn't the answer.
But the corporal has been in the Colony for many years, Zee. And she
undoubtedly picked up something from our conversation which put her to
flight."
Zee held a stunned silence.
"I
suppose," Barra continued after a while, "that she has returned to the Colony. Perhaps Wolf went along with her, and then again
perhaps he didn't. We expect to be out here for some months, you know. That, coupled with the inability to face you."
"But if your suspicions are true she
will be shipped back to the Isles.'' Zee was angry. "Stripped
of rank."
"True.
And quite possibly she has thought pf that, weighed
the consequences. What if she had remained .with the troop? It would be rather
difficult to care for her out here, Zee. It would be a handicap."
"I find it
disgusting!"
"I
find it a process of life," Barra flatly contradicted. "Wait until it
happens to you. And Zee ... your
manner doesn't invite friendliness from the troops. If the case is as we
believe, the corporal would rather face deportation than you."
Zee called a halt just before sundown and
made camp in a grove. She had the wagons driven far in so that the trees might
hide the canvases, and ordered an early meal so that the fire could be
extinguished before dark. Dividing the troops into equal commands under the
lieutenant and herself, she arranged to mount a full guard all night, on and
off in four hour shifts. Finally, she dispatched two women over the back trail,
to take a stand about a mile in the rear.
Perri was standing guard duty when the two
went past her, and she recognized one as the tall, dark haired woman from the
peninsula.
"Keep your eyes open, chicken,"
Perri advised mockingly. "If you spot a little man, blow your whistle when
you're all done with him."
"I'll save him for you," the tall
girl cracked. "You don't seem to mind playing second."
"Keep up out of the grass," Perri
retorted. The pair moved off up the trail.
With the coming of darkness, activity ceased
in the grove, beyond the quiet movement of the periodic changing of the guard. Again a great coppery moon rose in the
eastern sky, illuminating the plains. Zee stood guard, in her turn, staring out
through the halfdarkness until her eyes ached. There
had been no signal from the lookouts posted a mile behind them.
There would be none.
The two women lay face down on the ground,
skulls cracked, their possessions and clothes stripped from their bodied. They
hadn't lived to see the moon rise.
Perri saw a sudden movement, fifty fed: from
where she waited, and screamed a warning into the night at the same moment she
loosed an arrow. The small white body, glowing sickly pale under the moon,
leapt straight into the air with the arrow through its neck, to die before it
reached the ground again. She reached for a second arrow to fit into the.bow
and, was cut short by something that smashed her face. She neither
saw nor heard the flash of light or crack of
sharp explosion. A white, charging wave swept over her body to the grove.
N i n e
T |
HEY
rushed the trees, a howling, disorganized mob of naked savages with but one
fixed thought. The outer line of bowmen rose up from the grass and fired a
volley pointblank, quickly to drop their bows and pull steel as the first of
the charging horde overran their positions. Small dark weapons clutched in the
undersize hands spouted fire, the grove reverberated with the burst of crackling
thunder.
Zee
emptied her vial of poisonous fluid in the face of an attacker and leaped aside
in time to avoid his fire. In the next breath she found herself back to a tree,
fighting two of them. Her short sword cut deeply into the neck of one, and the
other fired, missing her head by inches. The flash half blinded her, and she
struck out wildly, finding something solid beneath the blade. When she could
see again, she found a man before her priming his weapon. Without pausing to
think, she jabbed out and cut his hand from his body. The weapon fell to the
ground. Another stroke, and the body tumbled after.
She
stepped away from the tree, and a small white form slid around it to raise a
weapon at her back. An arrow sang through his throat, felling him, and the
weapon he had held struck Zee's legs. She snatched it up with a hasty
examination, found a worked butt that was obviously meant to fit into the palm
of the hand, and a long protruding piece that could only be the lethal end. The
weapon had a small metal tip.
Pointing
the long end at the nearest howling face she jiggled the tip and was jolted
when the thing boomed and spat fire. The face dissolved in a hideous mass. She
pulled the tip again, without result, and after another futile try hurled it
away in favor of the blade.
She saw the white flash of the body coming
down on her from the tree, and brought up the sword to catch his belly on the
point. The attacker impaled himself and fired his hand weapon at the ground.
She hurled his body over her shoulder.
The mob retired as suddenly as it had come,
fleeing back into the safety of the night. Arrows flew after them, taking
steady toll until they were beyond reach.
When they were gone she wiped the sweat from
her eyes and looked around.
Lieutenant Donn was on the ground, the flesh
around her ribs blown away. Barra was already working over her.
"Is she all right?”
"I
think so, but then I know nothing of these weapons." "Were you
touched?"
"No. I had some bad
moments, but Fm all right."
"Those fire weapons—they're murderous. I
exploded one. It jolted my entire arm."
"I can tell you something about
that," Barra said, working on the wound. "They only fire once and
then have to be reloaded. I saw them doing that."
"I guessed as much. It explains the
withdrawal. They've fallen back to reload—they'll come again. But if that is
their weakness, we'll take advantage of it."
A shrill whistle cut the
night.
"Here they come!"
Zee shouted. "Archers!"
The second charge was no sneak attack but a fullscale open assault. With complete disregard of the
arrows falling among them, the mob swept across the ground toward the grove.
They held their fire until the foremost were but fifty
w feet from the waiting blades, then emptied the charges at the
women. Those immediately behind leaped over the falling bodies to reach the
line of defense.
Zee found herself astraddle the bodies of
Donn and the doctor, fighting off the howling men.
The second charge was of shorter duration,
although as fierce as the first. With half a mind, Zee listened for a decrease
in the thunder, and when it seemed to her that it had fallen off, indicating
the attackers had spent their ammunition, she shifted to the offensive,
confident that she was in no danger as long
as she didn't give them time to reload their weapons again.
When
the attacking line broke and began a second retreat into the distance, Zee
followed them, taking as many troopers as she could muster. They pursued the
fleeing horde for a hundred yards, slashing savagely and with deadly aim. Not
a single flash of defensive fire was directed at them. At a hundred yards Zee
ordered the archers into action, and fell back to the grove.
"Barra?"
"Still here, still
among the living."
"We've found their weakness. It's a
matter now of outlasting them."
"Hold off until sunrise, Zee. They'll
crawl back in their holes at daylight. I think that explains the whiteness of
their skin. They must live underground and emerge only at night. It seems to—listen!" She quickly rose to her knees, staring across
the open prairie. "Did you hear it?"
"I heard nothing. What
is it?"
They listened to a far away
roll of muted thunder.
"That can't be a
storm."
"No," Zee snapped,
.."and it isn't the noise made by their
weapons. It sounds more like—like—"
"Captain!" Lieutenant Donn lifted her head from the ground. "Down here—you
can hear it coming."
Zee dropped beside her, placed her head to
the soil. The rumbling thunder was clearly audible through the earth.
"Horses,
Barra! It sounds like horses running!" "A stampede,
Zee. We'd better get to the trees."
"Captain!" A trooper rose up out of the defense line. "Horses
—hundreds of them, coming this way!" .,
"Fall back," Zee shouted. She
swiftly stooped to pick up the lieutenant in her arms. "Take the wounded
with you. Fallback under the trees!"
The fast moving mass of hurtling horses
appeared far out on the prairie, little more than a shapeless blob of shifting
lines. As they swept closer the outlines became more clear,
became a frightened pack of running animals flying over the ground, running
from some unseen terror behind.
Abruptly, just ahead of them, the grass erupted a frenzied horde of bodies, childsized men leaping
from their hiding places to streak for the safety of the grove.
Zee put a whistle to her lips for a piercing
blast. "Archers! Take them!" She unsheathed her sword. "The dogs
think to find shelter here!"
A scant two dozen or more managed to reach
the trees ahead of the stampede, to be cut down instantly. The rest fell beneath
the hoofs of the pack of ponies and were trampled. The flying horses swept past
the grove and were lost in the night, the thunder of their passing receding in
the distance.
Zee leaned against a tree. "that was a narrow one! How many have we lost?" She
wiped an arm across her eyes
Seven dead, Captain. Sixteen wounded."
Barra spoke up suddenly.
"And one gained."
"Gained, Barra?"
The doctor reminded her mockingly, "You
don't think those
horses just happened along, do you?" She paced to the edge of the grove where
she could see the empty prairie, making no attempt to disguise her expectant eagerness.
"We've seen that trick before, Captain."
Zee moved to her side instantly. "Where
is he!"
"Here."
The man spoke behind them.
The Captain didn't hang him.
Neither did she give him the upbraiding she
thought he so richly deserved, she didn't loosen the angry flood of invective
dammed up within her, she didn't humiliate him nor strip him, for desertion, of
the rank he never possessed. Zee found herself unable
to utter a word, while her emotions and carefully rehearsed verbal lashings
churned unspent and. unsaid. She reached him in four quick steps and froze
there, her lips refusing to form sounds. Zee thought of all the things she
wanted to say, the accusations she wanted to hurl at him, the prompt, curt finish
of his life she intended to order. And nothing came out.
He waited patiently, waited for her to put
into words what he saw was on her mind, and kept his silence. She was unable to
translate the simplest of her thoughts into words. In a final gesture of
defeat, Zee threw out her hand as if to push away an invisible force
surrounding her, and her stiff military shoulders seemed to sag.
She said finally, with a
dullness, "You are back."
He nodded, watching her face, sensing the
resignation in her mind. "Back."
"Where is my corporal?" She asked
the question as if she didn't really care, as if nothing mattered to her now.
He pointed to the east. "Returned."
Zee closed her eyes wearily, beaten, not at
all surprised to find them aching and heavy. She made a sweeping gesture with
her hand to encompass the tableau. "I suppose I must thank you."
Wolf said nothing.
She turned and walked away from him, left the
group of watching troopers to walk away through the darkness and the engulfing
trees. He watched her go thoughtfully, unaware that
someone was tugging at his arm.
"Man, man' Barra cried, "are we glad
to see you! Am I glad
to see you again!" s
He brought his attention
down to the doctor. "Say again?"
"What? Oh—I said we were happy to see
you back." She thumped his chest. "Where have you been?"
"Returned ... corporal," he told her slowly, pausing to think of each
word before he used it. His voice was harsh from disuse, and he had difficulty
selecting the sounds which were needed to express what he wanted to say.
"Back there ..
. tunnel."
"She returned to the Colony?" Barra
nodded slowly. "And you went with her as far as the tunnels, I suppose?
Yes, I should have thought of that." She peered up at him. "It's.not easy to talk, is it? You're having trouble with words?"
"Have not .. . used . . . used . ..
?"
"Not used your
voice," Barra prompted.
"Not used my voice since
... since then."
"When is then? How long ago?"
"Child."
"You
haven't spoken since you were a child ?" Another
quick thought pushed into her mind. "Wolf—how long ago were you a child ? How old are you ?"
The man struggled with that one, knowing that
the terms months
and years were on the surface of her mind, there for the plucking, but still the
terms meant nothing to him. The doctor used a language entirely foreign to him,
and although he could carry on a limited conversation with her by seeking and
mouthing words he found in her vocabulary the words did not always have any
meaning to him. She was thinking now in terms of years, he saw that in her
mind, but years
was something he couldn't
identify.
"You don't sense," he told her
abruptly. "What is years?"
"A year?" Barra was momentarily startled. "Well... a year
is a full round of seasons, a year
is the length of time it takes the sun to go through summer, fall, winter and
spring. From one cold period to the next." Wolf
considered it.
And
again he shook his head. "Don't sense. No cold here, not once, not
more."
"No
winter season? I can hardly believe that. Don't you have snow
?" She closed her eyes and formed a mental picture of falling snow,
of whitecovered ground.
He said, "No."
"By
the Queen—what kind of a country is this ? Look,
friend," she returned to the earlier problem, "I'm trying to
determine your approximate age." She indicated the grove of trees.
"These trees are one or two hundred years old, I suppose. Were they here
when you were a child ?"
Wolf studied them. "No."
"Well!
We're getting somewhere. Now, we passed a dead town back there on the plains, a
town where winged people lived. Was that town there when you were a
child?"
"Yes."
"Was it dead?" "Yes."
"Were the flying men there?"
"Yes."
"Well,
maybe we aren't getting somewhere. All I've discovered is that if the grove is
two hundred years old, you are older. Pass it by for the moment. I'm happy at
least in proving one of my speculations. You don't need a voice."
He smiled at her. "No . . .
Doctor."
"I knew I was right," she told him
happily. "Zee wouldn't believe me, she thought it too fantastic."
Wolf glanced over the doctor's head toward
the far side of the grove where the captain had disappeared. "She is ... is ..:"
He stopped helplessly, unable to select a word.
"She is a mighty unhappy woman at this
moment," Barra said it for him. "You've saved her and her command,
and your reappearance is something of a shock. That, coupled with Zee's secret
emotions for the past few weeks, was top much to handle comfortably. She'll
come out of it." "Sick," the man said.
Barra grinned at him, and lowered her voice.
"She's in love. And don't bother to search for the meaning of the word—you
probably don't understand it."
"Love?"
"Never mind. I have work to do. We've lost seven women here, and if f don't get busy we might lose sixteen more."
Barra
returned to her work with the wounded. A burial detail was digging a deep
trench just outside the circle of trees. Wolf watched them for a moment and
picked up a spade to help. When the trench was completed and he saw its
purpose, he picked up a large square of canvas and struck out across the
prairie to where the bodies of the two sentries lay. Five bodies had been
placed in the ditch when he returned, and the squad waited near
by with spades. He lowered the rolled canvas into the ground and
watched the troopers fill the ditch. A fire had been rekindled.
Zee
struck camp before dawn and hurried westward, anxious to put a sizable
distance between them and the grove before another nightfall.
A few of the troops who had not suffered serious wounds walked beside the
wagons, while the others were carried inside. Wolf deliberately slowed the
caravan when it came to another stream, a more shallow
one.
"They will not cross
water," he said to Zee.
She stared at him without
answering.
Barra
took it up. "Who won't cross the stream? Those naked
little savages? We'll be safe on the other side?"
"Yes."
Lieutenant
Donn had climbed from the nearest wagon and joined the group. When Zee stood
indecisively on the bank of the river, looking across at the far shore, Wolf
turned to the lieutenant and seized her his arms. Donn opened her mouth with
surprise, to protest the action, and changed her mind. The man forded the
stream in waisfchigh water to carry the girl to the other bank. Then hè came back to
Zee.
"Why did you do that?" Barra wanted
to know. "She can walk."
Wolf
pointed to the bandages about another of the wounded troopers. "Keep dry. Water unclean." And picked up the second
girl to make another trip across.
Zee ran the wagons across without having to cut timber.
They
continued west at a slower pace after Zee had dispatched a halfdozen
troops to guard the rear. The points had assumed their usual place, and the
flanks swung far out in habitual marching order. ... There was no other incident for weeks.
Zee and the doctor marched together in their
usual place near the weapons wagon, with the girl always careful to keep the
older woman between herself and the man. Wolf and the doctor carried on an
animated though sketchy conversation. Zee listened intently but took no part in
it. It was the doctor's habit to seize each new thing they found, a
larger, older group of trees or a few tumbled buildings, and ask the man if
they existed when he was a child. And without exception the answers were the
same. The ruined buildings had been there before him, the trees had not. Doctor
Barra mentally pegged his age at three hundred years and felt satisfied.
The old buildings excited her curiosity, but
he could not explain them. They were there, they had always been there, he did not know who had built them or inhabited them. She
marveled that they had stood so Tong—or rather, that their remains had lasted
so long, and could not help but come to the conclusion that the builders had
known a special kind of magic when working with brick and stone.
She missed the archeologist, Perri; regretted
her death keenly. The, girl's knowledge was as great a loss as her life.
Barra was surprised one day to realize that
they had been away from the Colony a full month.
"Notice the change in the troops, Zee. And in us.' She extended a bare arm in obvious
satisfaction. "Look how brown. The sun makes me feel wonderful, content
with life. I haven't felt this well since I was a girl in the Home Isles."
Zee answered absently,
"Yes."
"I
like this life—I could take it forever. Believe me, it
will be hard to return to the Colony." She shuddered. "Rain—rain.
How I've come to hate it!" She indicated
the man walking beside her with a friendly finger. "When I'm as brown as
he is, I'll be ready to retire on my pension."
Zee
glanced at the troops. "I anticipate trouble, Barra, when the time comes
to return. You aren't the only one who likes this country, this climate."
"Umm. Maybe. But, Zee,
now that we've opened the country, won't it be necessary to keep patrols out
here? You surely will have to move those guards at the Pass farther west?"
"Yes.
Yes, I've considered that. The
guard should be posted at the mouth of the first tunnel, at least. And perhaps even farther. We know now what those hideous weapons are, know what they can do."
Her eyes swung to the scar on Wolf's back without realizing it.,
"And we certainly can't allow that near
the Colony. Not until we "find a way to combat the weapon."
Barra grunted. "Is there a way to combat fire and thunder?"
Zee didn't attempt an
answer.
"Lieutenant
Donn and I were discussing those weapons the other night; she's a sharp one,
that girl. Her mind is as keen as her eyesight. But I can't say I always
approve the direction in which her mind moves."
Zee said yes once more,
rather dryly.
Barra blinked at her.
"Donn is still puzzling over the destruction of that town. That's a
trooper for you. I'd give half the remaining years of my life to know the
secret of those winged people, and she's interested in destruction. However ... She thinks the fire weapons might be
responsible, larger ones of course. That whatever unseen charge it is which
enters a body can also fell a wall."
"I've
thought of the matter constantly," Zee retorted in heated defense. "I
am not blind to my duties! Donn may have a keen mind, but her tongue is
loose."
"Indeed?" Barra
said mildly.
"Indeed.
Trooper Perri, may the First Queen bless her spirit, planted the seed of an
idea. If you remember, Barra, we wondered at first if it were possible to hurl
rocks or weights at those buildings. If a device could be set up in a field
outside the town and cause its destruction from there. I've carried the measure
further. I'm wondering if the destruction we saw might hot
be a combination of the two weapons?"
Barra struggled to form a
picture, and failed.
"First,"
Zee outlined, "imagine a device for throwing a heavy weight over a great distance. And then imagine that device so arranged that the flash
of fire and clap of thunder occurs at the same time ... no ..." She
hesitated, seeking a more workable idea. "Barra, I have it! The fire and
noises in the charge, in the weight hurled against the building. It doesn't explode until it
strikes the wall! That must be the answer, Barra. The weight flies apart with a
great noise when it strikes a wall, tearing a hole in the wall."
Barra's mind still tried to
follow the picture.
Zee said, "Ask him the
name of that weapon."
"Ask him yourself, he's
right here."
"Ask him!" she
snapped.
Barra had no chance.
"Gun," Wolf
supplied quietly.
"Gun," Zee
repeated, turning the strange word over in her
mind. "It is a gun. Ask him how it works." Again the man spoke before Barra could ask.
"Not know."
Zee flashed him a quick, piercing glance. She
had an instant realization that he was lying, deliberately lying.
The three of them walked
along in silence.
The
country grew more hilly and the terrain rougher. Now and then it was necessary
for troops to put their strength to the wheels, helping the teams hoist the
wagons across soggy ground. Zee noted that the guide had pulled the caravan
around to a northwesterly direction, "and consulting the image of the
office wallmap which she carried in her mind,
supposed that they were nearing the city he had marked on the edge of the new
inland sea. She also noted, with sharp curiosity, that Wolf had adopted the
habit of watching the far northern horizon. Zee posted extra guards on that
flank accordingly, and began watching it herself.
She
continued to hold to the belief that he had lied to her about the gun, but gave
up any attempt to conceal her thoughts from him. A conversation between Barra
and the man had wiped from her mind any last doubts she may have held concerning
his ability to know what she was thinking.
They
had been marching, as usual, three abreast and there was a lull in the
conversation between the doctor and the tall native.
She
suddenly noticed Barra looking up at Wolf, with a wide grin on her lips.
Wolf
turned his head to her and said, "Yes," as though he were answering a
question. Barra had said nothing aloud.
"But
why not.'
Barra said then.
"You not have it. You
never have it."
"But
you can hear ... that is, see .,. well, you know
what I mean. Why can't I?"
"Not born with
it," Wolf told her. "Never have it."
"What's all
this?" Zee cut in.
"I'm amusing myself, Zee. I put a
question to him in my mind, but I didn't frame it in words. He answered
me." "I don't find that amusing."
"You
wouldn't, Zee, you wouldn't. You're too conservative; you don't see the vast
field this opens up to me. I asked him why it was that he could see what I was
thinking, but that the reverse didn't apply? Why
couldn't I know his thoughts? And he told me very simply what I should have
known—after all, I've lectured you long enough. I wasn't born with the gift,
I'll never have it."
"Gift!" the
captain repeated angrily.
"Gift,"
Barra declared. "After all, what possible deception could I withhold from
you if you saw through me?"
"I
don't like it," Zee maintained. And she clung to the idea that although he
might read her thoughts, those thoughts she formed into words for speaking purposes,
he did not and could not know her secret emotions she held locked deep within
her. Those were her own, and only hers. "It robs one of privacy."
The
doctor summoned up an argument on the pros and cons of mental privacy, but left
it unsaid when Wolf reached out gently and tapped her arm.
He walked with his eyes to
the north.
Zee alternately watched him
and the horizon.
"Wolf,"
Barra broke the silence once, "those winged people back there in the town.
They didn't speak either. Can they—?"
"Yes."
"And those naked
little beasts who attacked us?" "No." He shook his head.
"umm. They lack the gift? Then it was our fire that brought
them." ,
"No," he said again. He halted in
his stride and faced her, groping for the right descriptive word to use.
Finding none that was familiar, he put a finger
to her nose. "With that."
"My
nose?
Oh! They caught our scent?
"Scent?" He studied the term. "Yes." Wolf
put his hand on the doctor's arm, touched the skin of
her face and placed his fingers in her hair. "Scent."
And then he looked briefly at Zee, and said again, ""Yes."
"This place where you are taking us,
this city... Can the people there
read us ?"
"Yes.
Barra
laughed at the captain. "May as well make up your mind
to liking it, Zee."
Zee tightened the security of the camp that
night, instructing the sentries on the north to be especially watchful and
seeing that the strength of those posts was doubled. She prowled up and down
the defense perimeter most of the night, aware that Wolf was there as usual,
checking her sentries and keeping a close eye on the dark horizon. Nothing
happened, and she fell asleep some hours before dawn after finding him wrapped
in a bedroll under a wagon. It was the first time she had seen him cover himself in sleep.
The
watchful waiting continued for another two days while the troops moved steadily
into the northwest.
He was always watching the
northern reaches.
The
man's face itself revealed nothing to Zee although she scanned it constantly
for some clue to the inner excitement she knew to be growing behind his eyes.
Something of that unseen, unknown excitement communicated itself to her, made
its presence known upon her senses until she, too, was
watching the north with impatient curiosity. She found nothing on his face but
the outward calm composure, the always amused cast to his lips when he was
looking at her or thinking of her, the unreadable semi aloofness with which he
held himself. But she knew beyond doubt he was eagerly anticipating something
from the north. And she waited,
two
days.
It came late on the afternoon of the second
day. Wolf stopped suddenly, and Zee pulled to an abrupt halt behind him,
staring over his shoulder.
They watched the fleet,
running figure approach the camp.
The
troops on flank had seen the stranger and wheeled to the north, weapons ready.
The forward points had stopped, looked back, were waiting for some signal or
action. Zee had a quickening of the pulse when she recognized something in the
manner of the newcomer, something in the approach. The figure was running with
the speed that Wolf had run, the day he brought down the little horse for meat.
Lieutenant
Donn was the first to grasp the situation, she of the sharp eye. She saw the
stranger with clarity.
"Captain
..she began in astonishment,
"Captain ..
"Quick!" Zee demanded.
Donn
made on further attempt at words, knowing they were useless. The newcomer had
reached the flanking troops and dodged nimbly between them, leaping over the
sagging points of the weapons they had unconsciously lowered in astounded
consternation and surprise. The runner sped across the empty space toward them,
toward the man. She was smiling.
Their
visitor from the horizon was a lithe, bronzed woman as tall as Wolf, as
cleanlimbed and tanned, and almost as naked. She and the man were nearly
identical in build, in feature, in race. She bounded toward him. Wolf caught
her in his outstretched arms.
BOOK TWO
T |
HE passage of years, more years than a Methuselah might count if he were
there to count them, always brings change. Men make the political changes,
contribute to the biological changes. The forces in the earth, forces
sometimes called Mother Nature, make the geographical changes and contribute
more directly to the biological. Methuselah, if he were as wise as Solomon,
might chart the changes and trace them directly back to still other changes.
Mother Nature is a chain reaction in herself. A prolonged warmish period of centuries
duration may melt the polar ices and raise the level of the seas fifty or a
hundred feet. A sea raised a hundred feet would wash inshore toward the
mountains, obliterating coastal cities in its path. The constant pounding of atorm and wave would accomplish quickly what weather
required centuries to do: reduce to rubble those cities already partially
immersed. A continent having lowlands facing the sea would invite it inward,
creating a new inland sea, and a river that formerly flowed through the
lowlands might find itself nothing more than a channel at the bottom of a new
ocean.
Weather
follows the waters.
Warm
waters from a tropical zone would bring higher temperatures for the new
coasts, the new interiors. Life would adapt itself accordingly.
One
The
troops had camped for the night on the open plain, five weeks and seven hundred
miles from base of operations: The weeks had passed unnoticed and unmarked by
all but a few, and the Golpny behind them was but a
vague, unpleasant place seldom thought of by the troops. Their number was lessened
by eight fighters and a team. The native contingent had increased by one.
Zee complained bitterly to herself, and with
what she believed to be justification. She repeated some of the complaints to
the unalarmed doctor, the bitterness hand in hand with barely contained anger.
"Am
I no longer master of my troops, Barra? Have I nothing to say as to where we
are going, as to who enters and leaves my lines?" She rattled the eating
utensils in her hand. "Am I only a figurehead here, following the whim of
a stray—a native picked up and jailed by my patrol? Have I lost my command?"
"My
sympathies say no," Barra answered her, "but my common sense says
yes."
"He
walks away when he pleases, he goes wherever he pleases, he returns when he
pleases, and by the reverend saints he brings his tribe if he pleases!"
Zee cast an angry glance across the fire at the "tribe." "My
lines mean nothing, my security doesn't exist, and my troops are fast losing
discipline."
"Come
now, Zee, it isn't as bad as all that." She followed the captain's glance
across the camp to where Wolf sat with the strange woman, eating. The doctor
was beginning to entertain a humorous suspicion about the woman. "You're
imagining things worse than they are."
"Am
I? Barra, the troops are throwing
away their clothing, a bit at a time. You will find it scattered along our back
trail if you look. What does that mean?"
"It means they no longer need it. Look
at me. Look at yourself—you aren't in full uniform."
"If
they discard so much as one piece of their equipment, by the blessing of the
Queen I'll hang them, Barra! Already they have reverted to barbarians."
She watched the troops about the fire eating with their fingers, using the
utensils only when necessary. "They eat as he does, drink as he does, and
in their unguarded moment I suspect they think as he does. I won't have
it."
Barra
punched the captain in the arm. "You've overlooked your own point, Zee.
They may imitate his thinking in their unguarded moments, but it doesn't carry
over! They fought as well as ever, you can't deny that. Fought better, for what
the sun and the climate have done to them. Can't you appreciate that ? The troops are healthy, Zee, they have a mental and
physical health they never knew on the coast." She motioned at the
nearest. "Accept the judgment of your eyes. That girl is lean and hard and
in fighting trim. She's happy here."
"Barra, the point of
command is shifting."
"Nonsense."
"It
is! I can sense it in the troops, and that is fatal to any commander. No one
can hope to maintain order and respect if responsibility and leadership is
shifted to a subordinate. Oh, they obey my orders, yes,
they are too well trained not to. But they are looking less to me for
confidence, and more and more to him—a mere native."
"We've
discussed that mere
native question
before," Barra reminded her dryly.
Zee
turned on her suddenly with a new line of attack. "Where are we
going?" she demanded.
"What? We’ll go to the
city."
"And
for what purpose, Barra?"
"Well! You wanted to
see it, didn't you ?"
"I honestly don't
know. Now."
Barra peered at her.
"That's a strange answer." , "And the
best one I can give you. I'm not at all sure I can answer in any other manner. Did I want to see the city, back there in the Colony?"
"You said you
did."
"Yes,
I said I did. But did
I want to see it, or was
the desire planted in me the way a native plants his seeds in the soil?"
"Well, now . . ."
The doctor rested her eyes on Wolf.
"Barra,
think back to that night in my office, to the night my patrol picked him up and
you turned in the report. Do you recall suggesting this expedition, urging it
on me? Do you remember pointing out the white spaces on the wall map and
telling me this was the opportunity to see what—or who—lived on the far side of
the mountains? Do you remember convincing me?"
The doctor nodded slowly.
"Yes."
"Well,
then," Zee demanded triumphantly, "who convinced
you?"
Barra stopped eating, turned her face from
the fire to regard the captain. "I knew you were working up to that. Are
you suggesting he planted the seed in me?" .
"I am suggesting just
that."
Barra
chewed her food thoughtfully. Around them in the night the troops were
finishing their meal, were stretching out on the ground or getting up to wander
off. The great moon that had illuminated the plain for so many nights was now
only a shell of its former self, ridged with a faint circle of the body it had
been. Far out in the darkness the night birds were crying to each other and
their prey, crying new songs the doctor had never heard before.
"Do
you know," Barra answered absently, "you may be right, at that."
"I am right," Zee
asserted.
The doctor continued as
though die hadn't spoken.
"Yes, Captain, you may be right.. After I examined him, examined that wonderful body and
the mysterious things it hinted, I was fired with a sudden desire to see more,
know more. Part of the desire was natural with me and part of it was not. I
wanted to see the sun because his body told me there was a sun,
I wanted to see this great plain because his health told me there was a plain.
But above all, I wanted to see the other side of the mountains—and I don't
recall having such a burning desire for that before." She looked around at
Zee. "And I wasn't slow in communicating the fire to you."
Zee smashed a hard fist
into her open palm.
"Of course! Barra, do you recall when he placed that new city on the map? That was
enough to excite me, considering my profession. I thought at the time that was the beginning of my desire. Now I know better. That was the climax,
the decision to move. You were the beginning, you and your glowing report,
your wild speculations. The seed was planted in you, Barra, and you carried it
to me like the wind."
"Umm.
Skillful planting, you must admit." She put down her utensils. "Planted in you before you saw him."
"I'm
faced with one unrelenting fact, Barra. We did not impress him into our service as a guide."
"No?" y
"No. We were
deliberately led
here."
The
doctor nodded, smiling. "I've been thinking that for some time."
"My
security patrol did not just happen to find him and bring him in, he walked in
where the patrol had to find him. He was not brought to your operating table
and checked for disease; he offered himself to you; you said as much. He allowed
himself to be locked up for a week because he was waiting. And while he was
waiting, he knew the seed was growing." She swung her hand to indicate the
camp, the troops, the plains beyond. "He did
this, all this is his."
"Why don't you turn
and go back?" Barra asked sharply.
"Could I, Barra? Could
I really? Would the troops obey me?"
"I
think they would. They would grumble, but they would turn." And she
repeated her question. "Why don't you turn ?"
"I
don't. .." She hesitated, and after a silence,
said, "I can't, Barra."
"Umm. I
thought not. And someday 1 may tell you the reason."
"But he is leading us on and on!"
Barra faced her. "For what purpose?" "I
wish I knew. I wish I knew!"
"Trust
him, Zee. I do. After all, if he had some black purpose in mind he could have
killed us as easily back there, as here, or there tomorrow. Trust him."
"Oh, Barra, Barra, the eternal optimist,
the incurable romancer. Of course he could have killed us all, he could have caught us in the
tunnels, could have crept up on us while we slept; he could have remained away
until the men like children had finished their evil work. It isn't that which
worries me. The troops can handle him and his woman, too, if it should become
necessary. But, Barra . .."
"What else?"
"Hasn't it occurred to you at all that
he doesn't wish us dead, that he wants us alive—very much alive? His every action
is for our continued safety. And when we find his purpose for wanting us
alive—what then, Barra?"
The doctor stared at her.
"You sound like a schoolgirl."
"I knew you wouldn't
understand me!"
"I
do understand," Barra retorted quickly "I understand you very well.
And you still sound like a schoolgirl. Arrange your thoughts like a grown woman
who has knocked about the world for many years."
Wolf
and the woman arose from the fire and walked off into the darkness. Barra
followed the pair with her eyes.
"Zee," she said, "he isn't
going to kill you or torture you or eat you. He isn't going to feed you to the
little men or the wild animals. He's taking the best care of you and the troops
that he possibly can. He went all the way back to the tunnels with Corporal
Avon to protect her. He regrets as keenly as we do the death of those seven
women. Now what could he possibly want of us?"
"You
know!" Zee
whispered.
The doctor hid an impulse to grin. Zee had
gone back to being a woman.
"Yes," Barra said calmly, I know.
Or at least, I can guess. And I'm ready. Are you?"
Doctor Barra picked her path away from the
fire with care, stepping over sleeping bodies. The sentries of the second watch
had already replaced the first, and somewhere along the perimeter Zee was
prowling the night. She walked around the tethered horses and away from the
flickering firelight.
"Wolf," she said
once into the night air, and waited patiently.
He came to her presently,
walking with the woman.
"Talk?" Barra asked.
"Talk," the man
agreed. Barra looked at the woman.,
Wolf grinned happily.
"Mother," he said.
Barra
laughed outright. "I suspected as much. Did you guess that?" She
faced the woman with friendliness. "You have signs of age that Wolf does
not. Your skin, for one thing, and the darkness of your eyes.
If Zee wasn't so blind with jealousy she might have noticed the
differences."
"Jealousy?" Wolf questioned.
"Nevermind, you wouldn't know that either. Will your mother
talk?"
"Not talk. Listen . .
."
"Listen to what ?"
"Listen," he
cautioned again.
Barra listened.
"I would be pleased to
talk with you. About what?"
The doctor stared at her, astonished for all
her pose of worldliness, of expecting the unusual. "You didn't move your
lips! You didn't speak at all."
"Listen," Wolf
said again.
"I
do not speak with the lips," the woman said. "I am speaking with the
mind. I would be pleased to talk with you."
"But how do you do
it?" Barra demanded aloud.
"It is natural. Has
not my son explained it?"
"He
told me I could never know his thoughts. That I.. . that
it was a one way process."
"That
much is true. He may know you, although you may never know him. But you may
know me if I wish it so."
"Umm. You have an ability
beyond him?"
"That
is also true. There is no need for you and me to speak aloud; I know your
thoughts and can make you know mine. Sadly, my son cannot do likewise. It is
but one of his defects. You may speak to me with your mind, and I will answer
in kind. You may speak to him with your mind, but He must answer you with the
tongue."
"Why
is that?" Barra asked, forgetting herself and speaking aloud.
"He is . . ." she hesitated,
searching the doctor's mentality and vocabulary for the right expression.
"He is what you term an idiot."
"What!" Barra fell back, staring at
the man. "I don't believe it! Why, he's a better specimen than anything
I've seen in all the years of my profession. Nonsense!"
"I
must contradict you, for what I say is true. We are not of the same race as you
must realize. You may look up to him as a better physical specimen and even
perhaps a mental superior ; still, he is an
idiot." The unspoken words formed in the doctor's consciousness without
tone or accent,, without force or
no
CITY IN TNE $ 1A
emphasis, formed and made themselves known to her.
"What may be the median to your race is not the median to ours; and what
may be regarded as perfect by you is not necessarily perfect by our standards.
My son is not perfect, not median. Unhappily for me, my son is of low mentality
and possesses certain other defects. For those reasons he is an outcast."
"I find it hard to believe," Barra
persisted doggedly. "I look
up to him as I look to a mountain 1 could never reach." She
paused. "Outcast? Wolf?" .
.
"He
may not enter the city. He lacks the ability to read or to write, to continue
the chain of instruction, to educate those who may come after him. He is not
able to both receive and communicate ideas . . • this speech which you use, or mine. It is feared that he may
mate with a woman of the city and thus produce other children who will likewise
be deficient. That would be fatal to the city. Therefore the city is barred to him; he understands this and accepts it."
"I thought he was a wanderer," Barra answered
absently,
9
"I
said as much to Zee." She stopped, to struggle with the broader implications. "But look here, I don't understand all this
other, this reading and instruction. What. . ."
The beginning was already buried
in the past.
But
in the beginning there had been a great population, a mass of people who
covered the plains, the mountains, who lived
everywhere between the shores of two opposite seas. It was the nation of some race, a nation of many
people, many things, many ideas. Just what that nation
once was, was no longer known. Only fragments remained. Those fragments were
the property of the
city.
"I
can visualize that," the doctor interrupted. "I've seen the ruins on
the Big Continent. People gone,"
The
fragments were collected in an underground room. The city thought those fragments had been gathered from far and wide
when nation was dying, when it was
undergoing some fierce, unknown torture by fire and death; the fragments were
collected and stored in the underground room safe from harm. Some elderly
persons, and children, who could read and write and interpret the fragments,
waited there with them while the fire and destruction rained around them. And
that was the beginning of the city, of Wolf's people.
"Your ancestors,
yes," Barra nodded. "And you?"
That
was the beginning, and it was already buried in the past and lost, thousands of
years lost. The oldsters and the children survived the death that came to the
nation, and the treasures buried there remained intact. The children emerged
and resumed their lives, cared for the fragments. And when they began to
crumble to dust with the passage of time they . were copied, and the copies recopied when they, too, fell
away. The children of the children found a better way to preserve the words
when their turn came, they committed them to memory. The original fragments
had vanished as completely as the population which once was, and the copies of
the fragments were fast following. Memory was more durable. Thereafter as time
passed and new generations arose in the city, the entire knowledge of what had
once been was passed along from mind to mind, from child to child, and trained
memory kept it intact; intelligence communicated it to the newer generations.
Today in the city, she and her contemporaries were teaching the fragments to
their children.
"Except Wolf,"
Barra commented, "who lacks the gift."
Except her son, who was an idiot.
She had many children and only this one was deficient; his brothers and sisters
lived in the city, memorizing millions upon millions of words, to pass along to
their children.
"But why ?" Barra asked aloud. "For what end reason ?"
Because in the foreseeable future some people
would want knowledge again, would want to know about the past and the present,
would want to know the unknown things locked in the ground around them. Some
small race now building up between the mountains and the tar western sea would
seek knowledge, and they would have it ready for them. All
the knowledge which had once belonged to the vanished dead.
"Such
as those winged people?" the doctor suggested. "We gave them a team ... for plowing, 1
suppose."
The
flying ones had been to the city many times seeking knowledge. They had wanted
to know how to till the soil, how to make it more productive, and twice they
sought information on stopping a plague. They might well be the race which
would repopulate the plains.
Barra
glanced at Wolf and then at his mother. "Which brings us up to the
present," she said. "Why this . . ." and swept her hand in an
arc indicating the camp.
The woman hesitated.
"Look," the doctor invited,
touching her forehead. "I am your friend. I do not fear what you might
say." Again it began in the past.
Not
always had the city of knowledge been on the shore of a great sea, it had once
been far inland, two days' march from a mighty river
wending southward. But in the day of her parents, her son's grandparents, a strange thing had occurred to the south and the sea came in to
obliterate the river and the plains, to wash at the very foundation of their homes.
It remained there, and they found themselves living on a new coast. Even that had
been long ago. But a short while ago,
only years as the doctor counted the passing time, a disaster had struck in the
form of a huge tidal wave. The wave had come racing up
from the greater sea far to the south and smashed itself on the helpless city,
causing destruction, causing death.
It carried with it the seeds of a greater catastrophe, the
threat of extinction.
"Extinction!" Barra repeated m astonishment. "In the'
Queen's good name, how few of you were there?"
Before
the sea struck there had been three hundred and ten adults and children. The entire population of the city.
Barra peered closely at the woman, attempting
to read on her face the Toss she sensed in her
thoughts.
"And after the sea
struck?"
"We number one hundred
and forty, now."
"Is that all! Only a handful, and you've carried on for centuries
with a population as small as that? From three hundred and ten you've dropped
to a hundred and forty? By the blessed saints."
She ran her hand across her forehead staggered with the realization of the
loss. A new thought struck her. "In what proportion?" she asked
quickly. "What is the present balance between male and female?"
"Forty are
females."
"I
see. I see and understand. And I must admit that I sympathize with you."
The doctor paused. "But these winged people—they also have your mental
powers. Are they not superior to us?"
"The
flying ones could not help, although they wished to. Already their males far
outnumber the females, and they could spare none. And too, to the west across
our inland sea there lives another peaceful people,
but they could not help. By some means their balance is and always was even, a
male for a female. They feared to upset the
balance."
"Umm." The doctor nodded, grinning dryly and with sly amusement. "And so
there we were in the Colony, half a thousand brood mares waiting." She
flicked a glance at Wolf.
There
on the coastal strip of the eastern sea, across the mountains from the plain,
perched the Crown Colony of Western Somerset, a finger of the empire of the Home
Isles, having in addition to its native population several hundred stalwart
women with nothing more to do than police a population which never caused trouble. Several hundred women could, if
they
would, serve the greater cause of saving a city and a knowledge from extinction.
"If they would?" Barra repeated again. "They have a choice?"
"They have a choice. Although my son led
them here without direct knowledge, as he had been instructed to do, we will
not violate your privacy without your consent. If you do not choose to remain
with us, in the city, my son will lead you home again."
"Well! This is a startling turn."
"I will not deceive you; we desperately
need you."
"Speaking for myself," Barra said,
"I'm with you. I stay. And I know of my own knowledge that certain others
will. But , as for the entire troop—well, that's
another matter."
"I thank you, Doctor. You will be most
welcome."
"Don't misunderstand me, now. I'm
electing to stay for purely selfish reasons.
want your knowledge—I want to know those things
about my profession which I do not know, but that you surely do." She
added anxiously, "Do you?"
For the first time a warmth formed in the
doctor's mind with the words, a warmth that might have been a smile.
"I would be pleased to assist you, Doctor.
I have been trained for such a purpose all my life. As part of the knowledge
given me by my parents, I can quote to you from treatises of your calling.
Although I do not fully understand the terms and meanings, doubtless you will
recognize enough to fit it into your own knowledge. I have committed parts of
such subjects as biopsy, biology and biochemistry, viruses, vaccines and vasectomy,
and two subjects my ancestors called ecology and encephalia.
I do not know this last."
"I'll
stay," Barra said happily, closing her eyes. "I'll stay. Don't ever
doubt it." And then suddenly she opened them again. "How old are
you?"
"In terms of years, as you measure time? "Yes."
The woman was quiet, thinking about it.
"I would estimate four hundred." "And
Wolf?"
"About two hundred and fifty. Each generation among us has a longer life
span than the parent. My son's lifetime will be longer than mine."
"Man!" Barra said in wonder.
"Man! But here now . . . !
What of our troops ... ah, these
women defeat your purpose? We
both admit my race is inferior to yours. We cannot communi
cate with the mind, we cannot live as long, we cannot run as
swiftly. And as we go along we will find a dozen other ways
in which we do not measure up. What will that do
to your next
generation?" '
"It will be poorer, true, but not as
poor as you may think. We have among us one who is
versed in a science the ancients termed genetics, a science dealing with the
parent and the child. We have studied the problem most seriously, and we are
prepared to suffer the loss. We have no other choice. We must either accept a
less intelligent new generation, perhaps, or run the risk of extinction. Your
women are fine physical specimens; they are intelligent of their race. Their children
will perhaps lose the ability to know one another's minds, to race as swiftly,
to live as long. For a time, therefore, we must face the possibility of a lower
standard, and we are already examining the problem of committing our knowledge
to paper again, in anticipation of those future generations."
"You've thought of everything,"
Barra marveled. "Well, almost everything. How do you plan to tell the
troops?"
"You, Doctor."
"You. They respect you, your intelligence. They
will believe you. You shall tell them. Tell them quickly, early, so that they
may have the remainder of the journey to decide. And please make clear to them
that when we reach the city, my son will give them safe conduct home again if
they do not wish to stay. But tell them now, that they may think about
it."
"Umm. Merit in the suggestion. All right, I'll
break the news in the morning." She glanced again at Wolf. "I still
can't believe that you consider him mentally retarded."
"I am sorry, but it is so. Perhaps my
choice of the term idiot
is not quite correct, but I
could find no other descriptive word in your vocabulary with which to describe
him. Unhappily, my son is not as we are, he is sufficiently below us that we
dare not run the risk of his firing children. A mentally deficient strain would
ruin our work, our future." She placed an arm fondly about Wolf's
shoulders. "He is less now than those children would be tomorrow, the
children of our men and your troops."
"But," the doctor persisted
doggedly, "if he is less than you in intelligence and ability, and we are still less than him . . . what are we?"
"It is not my wish to
offend you, Doctor."
"Bosh—tell me. What are we in comparison?"
"Infants, Doctor.
Uneducated and impaired infants."
"Umm." She nodded, considering. "Under other
circumstances I'd hate to be told I was less than an idiot. However
.. . You will be running a risk with our women."
"We
have no other choice. And your women, however inferior they may be, are not
mentally deficient."
Barra raised her face to the sky to examine
the stars. She liked what she saw. Behind her the campfire had died to a small
glow and only the captain and the sentries were awake, pacing their lines. The
sky was near and the stars almost within reaching distance.
"All right," she
said again slowly, her eyes on the sky, "I'll
tell them in the morning, before we break camp.
But there are two things I will not tell them'
"Yes ... I can sense that. I can sense the
one."
"Two,"
Barra insisted. 'I’m going to omit all mention of Wolf's fitness—or lack of it,
fitness according to your standards. Let them think what they will, let them
form their own reasons as to why he Jives outside the city. I will not mention
his shortcomings . , . there
are ojie or two women in camp who couldn't appreciate
it."
"I sense your
meaning."
"There
are one or two women among us who especially think of him as a saint on earth,
physically speaking. Let them continue to think so. It may be necessary to
them."
"Yes. And the other?"
Barra
laughed softly. "I am not going to tell my captain yet that you are Wolf's
mother. Later perhaps, but not yet. My captain is
waking up to the woman within her—I think she needs to be fully awake."
Two
She
marched far ahead of the wagons, in a lonely position just behind the points.
She wanted to be alone, to think, without having the voices and the sight of
Doctor Barra and the two natives always impinging on her thoughts. She wanted
desperately to straighten out what the doctor had told her and the troops that
morning, to come to same decision as to what she would do on the day the
caravan reached the city. She had to reach a decision.
% She knew without questioning that her command would be split,, would split itself as those who wished to stay, stayed,
and those who did not, turned about for the reverse journey. And what would she
do about those; who chose to stay? Barra had declared outright she was not
going back. Who else would follow the doctor's example ?
And what could she do about it ? How could she stave
off mass desertion, and after the certain desertion was a fact, how could she
cope with the problem?
She
felt certain there would be no punishment for the deserters,
however she might feel about the matter. It would be taken from her hands. If
the people of the city were all that Barra had implied—and Zee had no thought
to doubt her—they would offer her troops sanctuary, would see to it that she
did not inflict punishment on the deserters. How then could she hope to
maintain discipline among the remainder? How could she hope to maintain command
of those who wanted to return, over the many weeks required to reach the
Colony?
The
Colony.
And
how would she face her superiors in the Home Isles, with a part of her command
gone, her discipline crumbling?
Zee
put a quick hand to her eyes and discovered tears there, tears she had not
known since childhood.
"Now
take me," the hostler said low voiced to the cook, "I know what's
good for me. I'm staying."
"I
don't know, I don't know." The cook was dubious. "I want to wait and
see."
"Don't
be a chicken! You know what's good for you, don't you? You like this sunshine
out here, don't you? You want a bellyful of rain all your life? Wise up,
chicken. You'll never get another chance at it. Think of the fun—" ,
"1 am
thinking of it. And I don't know ..."
"Be
human, you chicken, be human. You like the men as much as I do."
"I want to wait and
see," the cook insisted.
There
was talking along the flanks; there had always been talk on one subject or
another, but this morning all the talk centered on a common subject.
"Made up your mind,
little one?"
"Not yet, not yet. Sounds nice, doesn't
it?" "Depends on what you call nice." "Always thinking about your belly."
"No—there's
other things. I like it out here. But the pay is back there. You have more
freedom out here. But you eat better back there. Except it
rains, of course."
"It
rains—yes. I haven't seen my family for six or seven
years, do you know that? Mother and two sisters in the Isles— I wonder if I
want to see them again?"
"There's no coming back, if you stay hjere."
"I
know that. I'm wondering if I want to see the Isles again. Do I?"
"How
should I know? I don't. And I don't want to see the Colony again, either. What
a pesthole!"
"I still owed some of my next pay, back there."
"You sure won't have to pay it now, if
you don't want to."
"You staying?"
"Me? You can gamble your last arrow on
it!" "The captain'll blow air."
"The
captain'll be carrying one if she doesn't stop messing around that man
Wolf."
"I
like the idea of it, I applaud the idea. Did you ever imagine there could be
people somewhere, anywhere, who knew more than we've ever dreamed of
knowing?"
"Listen to the teacher!"
"I'm serious about this. They know
things that I don't, that I want to know. This is my opportunity."
"Stop blowing air."
"Say what you please. I'm going to
investigate." "What you going to do, chick?" "I've half
decided to stay."
"You have? Well . . . count me in. We've
knocked around together for a long time, so I might as well stay, too."
"What d'ya think the captain'll do, I ask
you?"
A laugh. "You ask me! Open your eyes, open your eyes. She'll never leave that naked
baby."
"Ya' think so?"
"I
think so. And I'll tell you something more—the lieutenant has got him marked,
too. What a scrap that'll be!"
"I'd put up odds on
the lieutenant."
"Not
a chance! But I'll pay to see the two of them fighting over a man—especially him."
"Just
keep your eyes open, that's all I say, keep your eyes
open, and you won't miss it."
"If they stay, we all
can, can't we?"
"You heard what the doctor said. And I'm
thinking you can stay whether the captain does or not." "No
lash?" "No lash."
The troop made a wide, purposeful detour
around the ruins of a monstrous city, ruins that stretched for uncounted miles
as far as the eye could see. Wolf took pains to caution the lieutenant against
approaching it, went forward past Zee to steer the
points away. The nearer flank was instructed to avoid it at all costs. All eyes
swung that way, examining the blasted towers of stone as they passed in the
distance.
"What is it,
Wolf?" Barra stopped to stare.
"Die," he said,
and then amended, "death."
"There is death in the
city? Men or animals?"
"Not men, not animals.
Death, not seen, not felt."
"A
death you cannot see or feel? More magic of these ancients of yours?" She
directed a thought at the older woman walking beside Wolf. "What causes
it?"
"I
do not know the answer. It was not in those fragments left behind, not in the
memories left me by my parents. I know only that it causes a fast, invisible
death if you so much as. walk through the streets. The
hair on the body falls away and the skin turns color, the organs of the body
bleed. You become violently ill and sometimes the skin sloughs off in large
pieces, the eyes may drop from their sockets. And after a few days you will
die."
"From nothing more than walking through
the streets?" ,
"That is truth."
"Would it be caused by those guns Wolf mentioned?" "No,
it is not by guns."
Barra
walked with her eyes on the ground. "I've been meaning to bring that
up," she said without speaking aloud. "Both of our officers have
exhibited a curiosity concerning those guns . ,. I'd like to suggest that
you don't reveal the secret of them."
For
the second time she seemed to feel a warmth in her mind, an approval or a sense
of agreement. "No one of you will know of them. Nor any who ask."
"Thank
you." And then as an afterthought, added, "I hope you have some
effective means of defending yourselves, your city?"
"We have. It does not involve guns or
any weapon you might imagine, but it is effective. My son could have saved you
the loss of those seven lives if he were able to master it."
"Oh
. . • Another indication of his
inferior abilities?" The doctor delicately avoided using
descriptive terms.
"That is true."
"I'm not going to pry," Barra
replied. "Let it go no further than this: judging by what you have said,
your defenses do not rely on hand or even physical weapons."
"No."
The mute remains of the city slowly swung
behind them, an everlasting monument to the genius of ancient man. He knew his
magic well and applied it accordingly.
Because of Wolf's urging, the points
described a halfcircle around the ruins and on the
opposite side picked up a broad, flat expanse of ground like a roadway running
into the west.
Like that earlier, too wide pathway through
the forests leading to the tunnels, this ribbon of bare ground seemed to hint
of artificiality. Zee noted it and said nothing, following her scours wherever
the man led them, quite convinced that the tribes and peoples who formerly
lived on this land were beyond explanation.
She hadn't stopped fighting her problem.
Without consciously realizing it, she had
allowed a part of it to become resolved in her mind, but she went on wrestling
with the remainder. She had stopped thinking of the troops who might stay
behind, stopped thinking of punishment that should, according to military
dictates, be meted out. Without directly realizing that she had given up that
portion of her problem and had already abandoned those troops who elected to
remain behind, she worried over the more urgent one of getting the balance of
her command back across the plain to the post. And the
reception that would be awaiting her there.
Zee didn't quite know how she had come upon
the figure, but presently she found herself thinking in terms of half. If half stayed behind in the city, how could she safely get the remaining
half back to the Colony? She would take the teams and wagons, of course; they
were needed; and, too, she couldn't abandon the Queen's property. Knowing the
country, they would find it somewhat easier to recross,
faster to cover the return journey. But still, a new way Would
have to be found over certain lengths of the back trail, certain parts of the
wild country. She simply could not withstand another attack from the white
little savages and their guns, not
with half her command missing. None of them would live to see the Colony.
It would be wise, too, to avoid that city where the winged ones lived; they might
want another team, perhaps all of them this time, and without horses she would
have to leave the wagons behind. Wolf would guide them back, perhaps he and
his
woman. They surely could find a safer route over
the plains to the tunnel.
His woman? The woman must have been waiting for him.
Somewhere
over there on the far side of the ruined city, she must have patiently waited
for his return, while Zee had held him in the Colony, had outfitted her train
and started westward. Had waited for him all those weeks
while the troops crawled westward, while Wolf conducted the corporal back to
the tunnels. She had waited a long time for the man.
Even
Lieutenant Donn seemed to have changed her mind; she stayed away from the pair.
Corporal
Avon had gone back, by this time had spread around the post the story of the
sundrenched plains. Avon, of course, would be stripped of rank and sent home in
disgrace, but those in the Colony would learn what it was like, here.
The
officer she had left in charge of the post during her absence was not an
overly imaginative woman, but she might think to extend the patrols, might push
the sentries at the West Pass a bit deeper into the valleys beyond. There was a
possibility she would send exploratory patrols through the valley to the
tunnels. They wouldn't venture beyond those, not until Zee returned.
Until
Zee returned.
That would be a bitter day. The commandant
returned, with only half her troops. And where were the rest
? They had chosen to stay behind, stay in a city far out on the plains.
Who among her superiors would accept that excuse? None.
And Captain Zee? The captain would be broken of rank
and relieved of her command, shipped home on the same boat with Corporal Avon
and her child.
Eventually a larger force would be sent
through the tunnels to the prairie, a force that would have to stumble across
the plain as best it could without the help of a native guide—
but then, that shouldn't be too difficult. Her own caravan had left a broad trail of waste in its wake,
clothing, refuse, signs of passage. With the aid of those troops who had made
the first journey, a larger force would not take too long to find the city
again. And then the deserters would answer to their decision. But unfortunately,
she would not be there to participate. She would be in the Home Isles.
Zee
thought briefly of anticipating the new command, of reorganizing her troops and
again starting westward as soon as she had returned to the Colony. Of adding
teams and wagons, restocking supplies and striking back at once, without
waiting the tedious months for the ship to sail to the Isles and return with
reinforcements. Strike before those troops remaining in the city could plan on
her arrival. But after a moment's thoughtful consideration of the plan she
discarded it. The risk was too great.
Doctor
Barra had said that morning there were a hundred
and forty people now living in the city.
With
the addition of half her deserting troops, there would be nearer two hundred.. Zee would need half a dozen teams and three hundred
fighting women to cross the plains again and storm that city. And three hundred
troops, in addition to those already absent, could not be spared from the
Colony. No.
The problem of retaliation
was in the lap of her successor.
While
she, meanwhile, would be under detention in the Isles with Corporal Avon. Poor
little Avon ... why hadn't she taken
more care?
But
what of those troops who did remain behind, who did stay with the strangers in
the city? What would become of them? Doctor Barra had stated rather plainly
what would b$ expected of them. How many of those troops in her command would
prefer a family life«to a fighting one? Well, to be more precise, how many of them would prefer a family life hereto police duties in the Colony?
CITY IN TNI SI A 13
Zee reached around to take off her jacket and
allow the sun to warm her bare shoulders and back. The Colony weather was no
happy thing. Barra's point was well taken—the troops were certainly healthier,
far more satisfied here than on the coast.
She only hoped those who remained behind
weren't choosing slavery.
It never occurred to Zee to shift a part of
the blame for her problem on the doctor for urging this on her, or to coming
over the mountains, or to condemn the man for causing it. That he had been
primarily responsible for their present position she realized and freely
admitted, but she alone had made the decision to move, regardless of the
outside pressures brought to bear. Wolf had held a prize dangling before her
eyes, Barra had made it easier for her, but she had snatched at it. None would
have left the Colony had not she decided they should. The blame was therefore
wholly hers.
She liked Wolf.
And
she looked forward with a quickening interest to making the long journey back
to the Colony with him at her side. If only his woman stayed behind. Perhaps
the woman's place was there in the city, perhaps it
would be necessary for her to stay. Then she and Wolf could make the return
trip together, alone. Possibly she had been too harsh with hint.
Would Lieutenant Donn go
back? Or stay?
Donn was pondering the
identical question.
Donn
marched along at the rear, far behind the wagons but just ahead of the rear
guard, where she might be alone. She saw the bare, bobbing shoulders of the
captain in the distance and guessed at her thoughts. Donn had no illusions as
to the captain's intentions, did not need to guess as
to her coming decision. The troops were talking, speculating, and many of them
would desert. They fully believed there would be no punishment of any kind,
now or in the future. They liked it here,
and
they would stay. It was as simple as that.
But Zee, like the stiff rulebook soldier that
she was, would turn her back on the city and march back to the coast. That
is—she would now. For a time,
Donn had been in doubt. But with the coming of the running woman, the doubt
vanished. Zee would go back, even though It meant the end of her career.
Where then, did that leave
the lieutenant?
If
she went back with the captain, doubtless she would be elevated to command of
the Colony when the captain was sent home. And in that position she would be
instructed to march out here once more to take the city, recapture the deserters.
Not a happy future. On the other hand if she remained, she would be obliged to
defend the city against a new commandant when that woman came with troops. A likewise unhappy choice.
One
way or the other, at some date in the future she would be engaged in fighting
over the city and the choice she made. Unless—and although it was a wishful
solution, it was still possible—a second attempt to take the city by force
would never be made. The Queen would not decide to march more troops across the
plains, or those intending to return to the Colony would never reach there to
tell the tale. A part
of their present force
would be hard put to reach there alive. If no one
returned, not one of the fighting force, the Colony
authorities just might close the Pass and write off the expedition as lost. The
corporal's early return would not be counted, of course. But if a year or more passed and the Captain and her troops failed to come back,
that might be the end of it In which case, she could stay behind with impunity.
Wolf would be hers .That
is—after the problem of this other woman was taken care of. That, however, was
another egg to be cracked when the time came to fry it. There was a certain
girl behind in the Colony who would miss her, but she could find someone else.
There must have been someone else before the lieutenant came
along, and doubtless there would be others. Wolf was
more interesting.
Donn
didn't realize she was lagging until she found the rear guard almost walking on
her heels. Without referring to anything in particular, she said,
"Quite a problem, isn't it?"
"Yes, Lieutenant."
"I've been studying the matter."
"Yes, Lieutenant."
"I
think," she said slowly, to emphasize the thoughts behind her words,
"that the force which returns to the Colony will
not be up to full strength."
"No, Lieutenant."
"It will be difficult to fend off an
attack."
One of the guards glanced at her. "Yes, Lieutenant."
Donn
nodded again slowly as though she were studying the seriousness of the problem,
and then trotted away to catch ud with the creaking wagons forward. The
troopers watched until she wat3 safely out of hearing.
"What'd I tell you?"
"Wounded
or not, some of the chicks are laying it on the line for her. They
think she can take the captain."
"Not a chance! Captain's got an
arm." '
"I want to watch it, that's all, I want
to watch it."
"You'll get your chance, chicken. That
lieutenant is goirig
to stay here. And when the captain orders her to turn around
and start back you'll get your chance." '
"What if the Captain doesn't go
back?"
"Just keep your sights on that Wolf,
he's the boy."
"What if she insists on going
back?"
"What if he picks her up and carries her
off?"
"Me,
I don't like the idea of slugging it out with them naked little bastards and their
fist fire again."
"You know what to do about that, don't
you, chicken?"
Captain Zee kept her eyes firmly trained on
the far horizon, eagerly searching for that first glint of water that would be
the sun shining on the inland sea. She felt they were very near the goal.
Somewhere before her in the reasonably near
distance was the sea, and on the edge of that sea was a symbol, a small star
sketched onto a map, a map which had held a large blank white space until a sea
and a symbol were added. She wanted very much to find the symbol and complete
her purpose, the only part of her purpose that could be completed now. She
would, of course, make the expected report when she returned to the post, but
it would be a hollow victory, not at all the kind of victory she had dreamed of
when she outfitted the expedition.
With her command almost visibly falling
apart, she had to reach that city to satisfy herself,
to finish a project in a way that would be in keeping with her training.
"Captain?"
She turned, startled, to find Wolf beside
her. She had not heard him approach.
"Yes?"
"We must turn—there." He pointed
off the path, again to a more northwesterly direction.
Without hesitation she called an order to the
points, and the caravan slowly swung into the indicated direction. The scouts
were not as alert as they had been in the past, marching now with an absent
reliance on the man to warn them in time of any approaching danger. They sensed
the march was nearing its end.
"Where is your city?" Zee asked. He
waved an arm. "Soon."
They walked along together, conscious of each
other. She searched the horizon again, only half expecting to see
anything. "Will we reach it tomorrow?"
"No."
"Perhaps the day after?" "I think yes."
A silence fell between them. Zee was thinking
of the end. She studied the ground, kicked at tufts of grass. She said finally,
"I don't plan to stay long. Rest the teams and the troops, only long
enough to restock our food and water supplies. Can you let us have
supplies?"
"Yes," he
answered again. "I want you—"
"You
what?" she demanded, and realized too late that she had cut him off before
he could finish. "Yes?"
"I want you to stay,
wish."
"Thank you," she said stiffly.
"I can't stay." They continued along in silence. The points topped a
rise and were lost to them. After a few moments' walk they crossed the hill to
find the points already climbing and disappearing over another. For a space as
they descended the first slope they were cut off from sight, the scouts already
gone beyond and the caravan hidden behind.
"I
wish," the man told her again. "Why?" she asked sharply.
"Like you," he said.
Zee repeated, "Thank you," but the
stiffness had dropped from her voice. "What is your city, like ?" He looked at her curiously. "Not
know." "You don't know? But why not?"
"I stay outside."
"But
surely you remember it as a child? You must have lived in it sometime."
"Not know now."
"Don't
you remember anything about it?" uI can't," he answered. "It . . . changes."
"Changes? What do you mean by that?"
"Not know. Changes. My mother explain
you."
"Thanks,"
Zee tried to be flippant. "I'll ask her someday. She •.. who ?"
"Mother." He was watching her again.
Zee stopped him, reached out a hand to grasp
his arm. She half turned to watch the caravan come over the hill, saw the flanking
troops pacing the wagons along the slopes, saw Lieutenant Donn pulling away
from the rearmost guards, saw Doctor Barra and the tall, tanned woman striding
along together just behind the wagons.
"Is she your mother?!' Zee demanded. "That woman?"
He grinned at her.
"Yes."
Shocked out of her placid senses, she could
only stare up at him, not fully understanding what he had said. "But why
didn't you tell me?" "Not ask."
Zee looked again at the woman walking with
Barra, and faced forward to resume the march. Unable to untangle her chaotic
thoughts or even understand a queer new emotion now playing havoc with her
mental stability, she was woodenly plodding alongside the man a space later
when she happened to glance down and discover she was still holding his arm.
Zee hooked the fingers of
both hands in her belt.
The
stars that night were larger than she had ever remembered them, and there were
countless thousands more than she had seen before.
She
walked away from the fire and the wagons to spread her bedroll on the slope of
a hillock, to a distance where the firelight conversation was no more than an
indistinct jumble of words and tones. Far away on her left she made out the
moving silhouette of the sentry against the stars. Zee lay on her back to clasp
fingers behind her head.
The stars were brilliant,
the air was crisp and clean. The day which had begun so wretchedly was ending
with a smooth serenity. ''
And
after another day, Wolf's city.
Three
SHE faced the sweep of water in open disappointment.
" The day before she had stepped up the pace of march, pushing the teams
as fast as she thought they should go until the doctor had forcibly slowed them
down, concerned with the wellbeing of those few wounded who still rode inside.
Zee habitually ranged far ahead of the troop, searching for a glimpse of the
sea and never finding it, standing impatiently until the caravan could catch
her again. She had camped that night with an eager intensity, knowing it to be
the last on the plains as far as the outward trip was concerned. And she had
been unable to find sleep early, turning again and again to speculation of the
end of the journey.
She
was up again before the sun, to break camp early. Seeking out Wolf and his
mother, she asked him if they would reach the city today. Wolf nodded his head
and agreed, while the older woman merely examined her in silent curiosity. Away
from them, Zee cautioned the troops to alertness and ordered that they should
approach the city like any other strange and perhaps hostile habitation.
And then she pushed forward
relentlessly.
Zee
discovered the sheet of water in the early forenoon and raced toward it while
the scouts labored to keep up. She raced downhill across sparse ground to come
to a running stop on the sandy shore of the sea, an immense sea oddly without
wave or motion. Her feet planted in the sand, she looked for a city that was
not there.
Her disappointment was
great, verging on anger.
Far
behind her the wagons creaked loudly as the teams tugged at them, and the troops
walking flank quickened their pace to pull ahead and fan out in a semicircle
defense perimeter, each tip of the line standing at the water's edge while the
middle bowed out to receive the wagons and close together again after they had
passed. The rear guard took up solitary stations on a ridge above the water,
watching both it and the plains behind them.
Barra peered at the sea and said nothing.
"Well?"
Zee demanded of Wolf, taking an aggressive stance before him.
He seemed amused.
"Here," he said.
"Where? Under the sea? Out there on an island?"
"Here," he
repeated, and pointed a finger to his feet.
She looked at the ground
and then into his face.
"Where
is it?"
The
man looked around at his mother and seemed to receive some unspoken assurance.
He reached out to take Zee's hand, and led her a few steps into the water.
"Here," he said
again. "Look down."
She
glanced down impatiently to see her feet on the bottom, the sea swirling around
her ankles. Before she could open her mouth to protest again, Wolf swiftly bent
down to scoop up a handful of water and dash it on her
uniform. She stepped back from him with a shout of annoyance and tried to brush
the water from her clothing. It was dry under her hand. Startled, she stared at
the clothing and the water, and then dipped her hand in it. She removed her
hand to stare at the dryness of it.
"Wolf What is this?"
"Feel," he
instructed her. "Feel the bottom."
Zee bent over o put both hands on the sea bottom.
"Close your
eyes," he said next.
She
obediently closed them, wondering. i
"What you feel?" he asked."Why,
mud of course ..
." "What you feel?" he asked again.
She
hesitated, moved her fingers, shoved her hands into it and wriggled her fingers
again.
"By the saints!" she exclaimed. "Dust!" Barra pushed out into the water beside
her. "Dust?"
"Dust,
Barra, dust as dry as dust! Put your hands into the water and close your eyes.
Rely on the fingers alone."
"It is dust," Barra echoed.
"What magic is this?"
"Street," Wolf told her.
"This is a—We're
standing on a street?"
"Street." He swept an arm around in
a wide arc. "City here."
"But
what is this water?" the doctor persisted. "Or what seems to be
water?"
"Not
water," he told her, and stopped, not knowing the words to describe it.
Barra
turned to his mother. "This," she said aloud for Zee's benefit,
"is what you meant when you said you had adequate defenses for the
city?"
"That
is truth, or part of the truth." The woman's reply was heard by both Zee
and the doctor, although she did not use her voice. "What you think you
see is but one of the weapons at our disposal. This is not water although it
seems to be to all who approach; this is not the sea, although it is skillfully
blended into the real sea a few miles away. What you are standing in could be
fire if we so wish it, or sand or mud or a mountain. This is but one of our
methods of hiding the city from those who should not discover us." As she
finished she was looking at Zee.
Zee was watching her, curiously intent.
"An illusion?" Barra suggested.
"That
is truth. You are standing in an illusion, not water, although you will believe
it to be water until you are made to realize otherwise, as my son has just
done. You are actually standing in one of the city streets." " It's all around us?"
The
tall woman smiled briefly and glanced beyond her, apparently at the empty sea.
"There
is a man standing watch scarcely twenty feet behind you; it is he who is
creating this illusion. Behind him are a small group of people watching us, and
still beyond them are others on the roofs of buildings, looking our way. We
have waited long to welcome you and nearly half our populace is watching."
Zee and the doctor had
whirled about, searching.
"Skillful," Barra
said in pleased wonder, "skillful indeed."
Zee
was nervous, coldly aware she and her troops could do nothing to protect
themselves against an adversary they could not see. Wolf reached out for her.
"Come here." ,
Holding
her hand, he led her forward. The water seemed to swirl about her legs and
climb higher on her body, until it almost reached her belt. Her skin remained
dry. When they had gone about twenty feet into the sea, Wolf stopped and raised
her arm into the air. Someone unseen gently took her hand, held it for a moment
and slowly pulled forward.
"What is this!" Zee demanded.
"Sentry," Wolf
said, and stepped back. "Go in."
Zee
fought off a sense of appearing foolish, and let herself
be led forward. Abruptly she vanished from sight.
"What . . . ?"
Barra cried.
"She
is past the sentry, and we can no longer see her. But she can see the city now,
and she is turning to look back at us. She is startled to see the truth of what
I have said. The captain is staring as us, marveling that we cannot see her,
although we are but a short distance apart. Now she has turned about to look at
my people and the city. She does not trust us completely."
The
woman broke off to glance at the doctor. "Would you like to go in?"
"In the Queen's name, yes!"
Wolf
led the doctor out into the water and held her hand in the air. It was taken by
the invisible sentry and Barra was gently pulled across the unseen threshold.
Lieutenant
Donn waited with the troops on the beach. Donn was as alert, as watchful as the
captain had been before her. concerned with the same
security and aware of the same helplessness, but she was not nervous nor
afraid. Donn had put more faith in Wolf and his woman than had the captain.
Zee
reappeared just as suddenly, standing waist deep in water. She held onto an
unseen something for orientation. Wolf waited a few feet away.
"I
would like to take troops inside."
Wolf
said, "Yes."
"How many?"
Wolf
turned to his mother standing on the shore.
"As.
few or as many as you like. Above all things we strive to convince you of our
honesty, our sincere purpose, our truthfulness. You may take as many troops as
you like, you may go anywhere in the city you choose, you may stay or leave
when you are ready. No hand will stop you."
Zee
locked glances with the lithe woman, aware of the peculiar relationship growing
between them. She was convinced Wolf's mother knew her intentions far better
than Wolf knew or guessed; she was also convinced the other woman knew
something beyond them, something which she and Wolf did not yet know. It was in
the mother's attitude, it slightly colored the thoughts and words she directed
into Zee's receptive mind.
Zee
looked away. "Lieutenant!" "Yes,
Captain?"
"Divide
the troops. I will take half and search the city immediately while you post
the remainder on guard. When I return, you will lead in the second half. Barra
will be our liaison "Yes, Captain."
Zee stood where she was, holding onto the
invisible object by her side, while the specified number of troops marched past
her into the sea and vanished beyond the barrier. When the last had gone, Zee
turned to follow.
Wolf
and his mother retreated from the water and sat down to await their return.'
She told Wolf that they should wait there for the quieting effect it had on the
troops who remained behind. The lieutenant, she said, was planning to hold them
as hostage if the captain failed to return, and they should give every
indication of peaceful waiting.
Because Zee" did not fully trust the
potentiality of a hostile city—and by training, any community not under the
protection or occupation of the Queen's troops was regarded as hostile she
bivouacked the entire troop outside the city for the night, not allowing any to
remain within the barrier. In turn, all had explored the city, seen for
themselves how small a population it held, discovered there were no obvious
physical weapons for waging war, and retired to the hillside. She caused them
to camp along the supposed shore of the illusionary sea and up the sloping hill
of the approaches. As in previous times of danger, Zee doubled the guards and
faced them not only to the way they had come, but also to the unseen city.
And then she stalked away
by herself to mull her problem.
Wolf
camped there with them, and before darkness fell his mother emerged from
nothingness to join the troop.
Doctor Barra moved aside to
make room for her.
"Pretty
out there, isn't it," she pointed to where the newly rising moon marked a
sparkling path on the "waters."
Wolf followed her finger,
grinning.
"Sister," he
said, as if that explained everything.
"What about your sister?"
He glanced at his mother, and she took it up.
"My daughter is on watch now, there
where the other sentry stood today. The illusion you see is maintained
constantly and, of course, it is necessary to add to it those other things
which might betray it as only an illusion. The moonpath, as you know. Sometimes a school of fish. Occasionally an unfriendly
person approaches us from the plains and although we are able to detect him at
a distance, still it is not in us to harm him. We use his eyes to deceive him
and turn him away."
Barra was instantly curious. "You detect
him at a distance? How?"
"By means of our mental training. As you will learn if you study what we have
to offer, those ancient ancestors of ours had developed a mechanical device for
discovering the approach of objects, while those objects were still some
distance away. Lacking mechanical devices and material to copy them, we
substituted a far more efficient means, mental alertness. They had theorized
and experimented with various mental powers, believing such were possible, but
were not able to use them. They gave such manifestations names like
telekinesis, telenergy, telepathy and so forth."
"Did it does it work?"
"It did not work well or perhaps at all
for them. But as you can see it works very well for us. The ancients simply
lacked the. mentality and strength of mind to operate
it."
"A
moment now—how do you know anyone is approaching?" "We can sense him,
and shortly thereafter, see him."; "You knew we were
coming?"
"That is truth. We sensed you while you
were yet a week distant. So large a body of people could not
fail to attract our attention. I set out to find you immediately."
Barra shook her head. "By the Sainted
Queen, I never
dreamed of anything like this! It's wonderful. You
can do anything with your mind!" "Anything."
"Good!" Barra cried in triumph.
"I maneuvered you into that."
"I am aware."
"I expected you would be. Now: you and
your people have planned this entire expedition, you
sent Wolf to the coast to bring us and he skillfully planted the desire in us.
Very well, we are here. You've also outlined what is desired of us, and some of us will stay, for one reason or another, all selfish." She
grinned at the other woman. "Count me among the latter. But there is
likely to be some trouble tomorrow, do you know that?"
"It has been
anticipated."
"Zee will get fidgety and start mapping
plans to return to the Colony. The teams aren't rested, and the wagons still
need restocking, but you know my captain. Training has been drummed into her
until she hardly remembers to act like a woman. The troops are different; some
of them are women, some are troopers. Some have a fierce loyalty to the Queen,
and others don't care; they're in the army for various small reasons. In the
morning Zee will cast her eyes backward and things will start happening.
Desertion means a terrible thing to troops."
"You
speak in truth, and that too has been anticipated. Some of your troops think to
remain with us only for personal and physical reasons, some seek the knowledge
we have to offer, some would as soon stay as not for no
good reason. While those others you speak of believe they must return because
of % a term they call duty.
Duty has been instilled in
them by training. Training, by necessity, robs them of individualism and the
ability to think for themselves. Their training is for living in a warlike
state and we have no warlike state."
"Granted. So . . . ?"
"It is not desirable to have among us
women who desire only
physical gratification, or women who would stay
because they have nothing better to do. The seekers of knowledge we welcome,
those who understand our plight and are willing to help us keep the knowledge
alive, we thrice welcome. Therefore, when these troops awake with the dawn they
will be individuals able to think out and choose their own destiny, and they
will be able to do it solely upon merit, not personal or baser reasons."
"What? You mean to say
you'll tinker with their minds?"
"No, good doctor, no. We would no more harm their minds than we
would harm their bodies. But that they may see and understand our problems with
clear reality, they will be given the mental power to understand what is
needed, what is expected, and what the future will bring for their decision.
There will be no fear in their minds of retaliation for making a decision, there will be no binding sense of duty or
training. For perhaps the first time in their adult lives they will be in the
position of free agents, able to choose without any outside interference
whichever future they desire."
"Ummm. And those who don't want to stay?"
"They
will have restored to them everything that was temporarily removed from their
minds, their sense of duty and training, their obedience and loyalty,
so that they may return to their homeland the same person they left."
"A free agent? I like that phrase. In a sense then, you intend to strike off their shackles ?"
"We
intend to give them for a moment complete individuality that they may see and
decide for themselves, each alone and 'without restraint of any nature, what
must be accomplished here if this continent is to prosper and grow again."
She faced the doctor with an intense seriousness. "We intend to remove
mental blocks and ties and fears so that each may stand on her two feet,
physically and mentally, and decide her future for herself."
••That'll
be a good trick if you can do it," Barra commented.
"In truth, we can do it, Doctor. You
haven't begun to guess at our accomplishments."
"No,
but in the next few years I intend to find out about them." She hesitated,
watching the advancing moonpath. "I'm wondering, though, just how many
troopers will want to go back to the Colony?"
Wolf grinned at her.
His mother said without speaking. "You
will be very surprised in the morning."
"Now don't tell me you can see into the
future?"
"In
a limited sense, yes, but not in the way you imply. Having » so vast a
knowledge at hand and in daily use, it is not difficult to foresee the
morrow."
"I sort of like
surprises," Barra said after a while.
Captain
Zee was awakened by a short, sharp blast of a whistle.
She
rolled quickly from her bedding and leaped to her feet, astonished to find the
entire body of troops had preceded her and were lining up in three long rows,
facing Lieutenant Donn and the sea that didn't really exist. Even the sentries
had been pulled down on the beach, leaving the ridges unguarded. Cooking fires
had not yet been lit, and there was no evidence that the morning meal was in
preparation.
She
sped down the gentle slope toward the troops at a fast trot, angry and annoyed
with her junior officer. Halfway down she consciously checked herself, slowed
to a walk and found her anger trickling away to merge with the dawning
realization of what the early morning parade actually meant.
Barra had warned her it was coming.
Today—this
morning—in a short space of time she would know the voluntary loss of troops,
would see a part of her proud command desert her authority and cast their lot
with Wolf's people. The turning point was upon her. Here—now, was the
inglorious end of a military career and the real beginning of a long and lonely
journey back to the Home Isles. She was finished, finished in a manner not
dreamed of when she had so optimistically outfitted an expedition and plunged
over the mountains on
the Colony's western border.
Zee
walked slowly around the ends of the triple line and approached the waiting
lieutenant.
Donn saluted her, for what
she guessed was the last time.
"All present,
Captain."
"Thank
you, Lieutenant," she answered dryly. "Carry on." "I, Captain?" Donn studied her facial mask. "You, Lieutenant. Find out what we both want to
know." "Yes, Captain."
Wolf
and his mother were standing a small distance away, watching the procedure.
Quietly and unexpectedly, Barra appeared from the invisible doorway of the
city and joined them. Zee walked away from the lieutenant and crossed over to
them, saying nothing, turning about to watch the troops. She felt the doctor
move to her side.
Lieutenant Donn spoke with
a crisp, carrying voice.
"Attention!"
She hesitated only a moment. "By now, each of you fully understands the
choice to be made here. Each of you has had time to decide." Her eyes
swept the rigid lines. "Those of you who choose to remain here, in the
city, will stay in line. And those of you who have chosen to return to the
Colony will form a new line behind the captain." Again she hesitated. "March!"
The lieutenant stepped back
and waited, watching.
Zee
momentarily closed her eyes. Here it was—here—now— here now. It had happened.
She opened them to look.
Four
troopers moved from the ranks and walked quickly to where Zee stood, grouped
themselves behind her. Four.
They were equally as startled as Zee, when
they turned to count their own number, when they saw the great body of women remaining in the lines. Uneasily
they stood behind the captain and stared at one another.
Those
four frightened Zee, frightened and shocked her in the knowledge that she had
so little command left. She had expected about half or even in her darkest
suspicions, perhaps ler than half. But four! She
strove to hide the fright on her face when she turned to Wolf and his mother.
"You win," she
said dully.
"Wait," the older
woman cautioned. "The end isn't yet."
"What more could there be?" Zee
asked lifelessly. She glanced to where the lieutenant stood apart, joining
neither the solid ranks on the beach nor the uneasy group behind her.
"Wait."
The
four troopers at her back were whispering among themselves, gesticulating, and
suddenly appeared to reach a nervous decision. A spokesman was appointed among
them by the simple expedient of three shoving the fourth forward. The girl
flung a worried look at the body of troops and approached Zee with a
halfhearted salute.
"Captain?"
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry, Captain ... we want to change our minds. We
don't think there is a chance of only five of us getting back
alive. We'd___ like to stay here
with the others."
"Very well." Zee held her voice to a flat monotone. And there went the remainder of
her command, pitiful remainder that it was. Not even these four wanted to go
back with her. She was left alone, with nothing, to return to the Colony by
herself. And that was akin to uselessness, returning alone. She brougt her head up and answered the girl's salute. "Go
back to the ranks."
"Thank you,
Captain."
The
four eagerly moved back across the separating space to rejoin the lines. Zee
moved a pace away from the doctor, threw another glance at her junior officer.
"Well, lieutenant,
have you decided ?"
"Yes,
Captain."
"Do
you intend to remain in the city?'. "No,
Captain!"
Amazed,
Zee didn't try to conceal her surprise. She thought she had known the
lieutenant's decision for days. Here was but another example of underestimating
her troops.
With
open incredulity she asked, "You are returning to the Colony?"
"No,
Captain !"
"You
..." Zee halted, puzzled at the
answer, and from the corner of her eye caught the shifting attention of the
troop. There was a subtle turning of heads, a quiet watchfulness, and mounting
expectation. Sharply then, she cried, "What are you going to do?"
Lieutenant
Donn threw back her shoulders as if shrugging off her uniform,
dropped the pretense of military formality and grinned insolently at Zee. She
pointed a quick finger at Wolf.
"I'm
choosing him."
"You're
what?" It was another jolt for Zee, a jolt of a
different and more personal nature. She recalled the day she had watched the
lieutenant from the office window, the day her junior officer had suddenly
experienced a change of mind and decided to accompany the expeditionary force.
And she remembered the fierce, possessive emotion that had grown in her mind.
"You are doing what?"
She
stalked across the beach.
"He's the choice I've made," the
Lieutenant stubbornly repeated, warily watching the captain's approach.
"Wherever he goes, I go!"
Zee
planted her feet wide apart and leaned forward.
"He
is mine," she said clearly, forcefully.
"Not
a chance !" Donn snapped.
Zee
unbuckled her weapons belt and let it fall.
"Mine,
she said again, and swung a
balled fist.
Wolf raced across the sand and reached them
before a halfdozen blows had been delivered by either
combatant. He held them in the grip of his strong hands, at opposite arms'
length. "Stop," he commanded, and shook them roughly.
"I've made my
choice," the lieutenant declared.
Zee only glared at her in
silence.
"Stop,"
Wolf said again. "Stop now, or I... I..." He looked helplessly at the
doctor for assistance.
"Or
you'll knock their heads together," the delighted Barra supplied.
"Or I knock heads
together," he echoed.
The
troopers held only a ragged semblance of their former lines as they watched the
struggle with frank interest. Some few were disappointed that it had been
interrupted so soon.
Donn tried to wriggle out
from under the man's grasp.
"But I chose
you!" she protested.
"And
I'm staying," Zee retorted with sudden fire in her voice. "I'm not
returning to the Colony without a command, and I'm not remaining in the city if
he can't enter. I'm staying with him."
Barra laughed at the three of them.
"Man," she advised, "you have a problem."
"I
decide," Wolf answered her, and shook the girls again, one held in either
hand. "Not they choose. I decide."
Three wagons and a hundred picked troops,
four teams, one civilian doctor, one. native, all streamed westward through the Pass and down into
the greygreen valley beyond. The guards standing
perpetual watch in the sentry boxes saw them go,
watched the last of the caravan out of sight.
None, save one, was seen again.
The
whitened bones of that one were found far up the valley, picked clean by some
scavenger. The remains were identified only as some trooper by the incredible
hardware left with the body. And after due consideration of those bones, the
new mill • tary authority of the Crown Colony of Western
Somerset closed the Pass.
The expedition was written off as lost.
Four
W0LF waited alone on the shore of the illusionary sea.
Before him a flock of white
birds dipped gracefully above the imaginary water, searching for fish that were
not there. Briefly he cast an amused glance at the inner sentry who lounged
twenty or thirty feet away, maintaining the illusion, and they both returned to
watching the birds.
The
sun was high and warm on his naked chest, and he waited contentedly for the
reappearance of someone from the city.
He
had gone about the troop's campsite carefully erasing all signs of their
occupancy and passage, obliterating the marks of wagon wheels and deepset hoofs, where that trail had rolled across the sand
and vanished into the sea. The trampled paths of many feet in the sand had been
swept away, the remains of a fire carefully buried. The shore held nothing now
but the marks of his own feet, the vague trail of his coming and going from the
water's edge, the impression in the sand where he was sitting.
And after they left, that too would be
erased.
The back trail would
require longer to disappear.
It
was unguessable when another rock slide might cover
the tunnel mouth. Only successive months of the wind and the weather would
eliminate the trail, blow away the rubbish and the discarded clothing, wash
clear the ruts made by wheels in the soil. In perhaps a year or so, grass would
again grow over those bare spots which now held the ashes of cooking fires, and
stray bits of lost metal and buttons would rust and turn brown under the sun.
The first heavy rains would eliminate the marks of feet and wagons on river
banks and crossings.
It would be many years before the common
grave beneath the grove of trees vanished. Many years before the mound of earth
would sink to a level with the surrounding surface, before grass would again
take firm root and hide the physical outlines of the grave. But in the
remainder of his own lifetime the burial site would
slowly become lost and only the grove would remain to mark the general
whereabouts of the seven troopers.
Conversely,
one part of their back trail would never be hidden, would instead expand
itself as an unexpected monument to their passing. They had left a team of
horses in the city of the winged people.
Wolf leaped to his feet as the lieutenant
appeared from the sea.
"Go?" he asked.
"I'm
ready." Donn smiled at him and stretched her bare body to the sun.
"The doctor wants to say goodbye."
Donn
had cast aside most of her uniform as useless, and now she wore nothing more
than a brief skirt which reached halfway to her knee, a loosefitting
jacket about her shoulders, and a pair of sandals for feet that had not yet
toughened for naked travel. "Should have thrown the rest away weeks
ago," Barra had commented in approval. "The less you wear, the healthier. No rain here." The lieutenant
clung to her short sword, a bow and a sheath of arrows slung across her back.
She stood on the beach beside Wolf, pleased with herself.
The sun warmed her skin.
The
doctor walked out of the city with that sudden illusion of appearing from
nowhere into the here.
"Wolf," she said with tender humor,
"you're my pride and
joy. Don't forget I saw you first—well, almost first. And don't
forget to come back to me."
He returned her smile, thumping her shoulder.
"Will come."
"Where
are you going, do you know? For how long?" He
pointed a lazy finger along the northwest rim of the seal "Around, far'
"Around the sea and deeper into the
west? Fd like to do that, I'd like to go
with you if there wasn't a greater attraction here. What will you find out
there?"
"Plains, mountains, same. Bigger. Mountains
you not climb. People who sleep ... sleep all time, but not dead."
"What's that?"
"Not dead. Just sleep in caves."
"You mean there are people out there
sleeping in caves, who appear to be dead but aren't? They've been there a long
while?"
"Yes. Since I was
child. Always there."
Barra turned on the lieutenant. "Donn,
you've got to investigate that! Find out about it for me, will you ? Find out everything you can and come back and tell
me." She whirled on the man. "How long will you be gone?"
He gave her a blank look.
"Six
months?" Barra demanded. "A year? Two years?
Oh, by the Queen, why don't you live with a calendar!"
She turned her attention to the lieutenant once more. "Make him come back
in a year's time, Donn. I've got to know about those sleepers."
Donn grinned assent. "A year it
is."
"Fine. And Donn—take care of yourself. You know what
I mean. Either way you prefer it, girl, it's all right with me. And if you need
help, don't hesitate to come back."
The lieutenant's grin crackled into a laugh.
'I’ll have fun, doctor."
"I don't doubt it," Barra replied,
"I don't doubt it." She cocked an eye at the girl. "One word of
advice—you'd better behave yourself from this moment onward. No more scrapping
or he'll do more than knock your heads together, something you wouldn't like. I
don't think you want to lose him."
"I don't," Donn said, and held out
her hand. "I'll take care, Doctor."
Zee appeared from the portals of the city.
She
had left the badges and trappings of office behind her, had discarded most of
her clothing and was as briefly clad as the lieutenant. Self consciously she
tugged at the shorn of the skirt and looked to see if the man were staring at
her body.
"Go?" Wolf asked
her, with an eagerness.
Zee nodded and glanced
curiously at the lieutenant.
Barra
put a hand on her shoulder, shook it. "No more
speeches, Zee. I've already told you all I had to say. Just keep it in mind,
and come back."
"We'll be back;
Barra."
"Well goodbye."
She
stood there a long time and watched the three of them walking away from her.
The trio followed the gentle curving slope of the shore until it stretched
artfully around the hidden city to meet the shore of the real sea. Barra followed them with straining eyes until
they were almost lost in the hazy distance of sky and water. Zee turned, and waved to her. Barra stepped into the mirage, seeking the street.
i
THE END