“His ways are strange.”
“You don’t seem to care particularly.”
“I care. I care so much I can’t talk about it.”
“Maybe your chance will come.”
“I hope so.” After a moment Meade said, “It isn’t going well.”
“No. We’re washed up. I guess I didn’t turn out to be much help. The crisis has come and I can’t do anything.”
“Why not?”
“Not enough power. Somebody’s moving between our model and the object. Cutting us off. Rolling the reconstructed area back.”
“Who?”
“You know.” Barton indicated the slope and the town below. “He’s down there, somewhere. With his rats and spiders and snakes.”
Meade’s hands twisted. “If I could get my hands on him…”
“You had your chance. You were happy with things as they are.”
“Barton, I was afraid. I didn’t want to go back to my old form.” Meade’s eyes were pleading. “I’m still afraid. I know this is all wrong; don’t you think I understand that? But I can’t do it. I can’t face going back. I don’t know why. I don’t even know what I was. Barton, I’m actually glad it’s failing. You understand? I’m glad it’s going to stay the way it is. God, I wish I were dead.”
Barton wasn’t listening. He was watching something half way down the side of the slope.
In the gloom, a gray cloud was moving slowly upward. It heaved and surged, a billowing mass that grew larger each moment. What was it? He couldn’t make it out, in the half-light of early morning. Nearer and nearer the cloud came. Some of the Wanderers had broken away from the circle and were hurrying uneasily to the edge of the slope. From the cloud, a low murmur came. A distant drumming.
Moths.
A few gray shapes fluttered wildly past Barton, toward Hilda. A vast solid mass of death’s-head moths, pushing in panic up the slope toward the Wanderers. Thousands of them. All were there, the whole bunch from the valley floor. Returning in a mass. But why?
And then he saw. At the same time, the rest of the Wanderers broke away from the circle and flocked to the edge of the slope. Hilda shouted quick, frantic orders. Reconstruction was forgotten. All of them grouped together, whitefaced and terrified. The fleeing moths broke over them in panic-stricken waves, useless remnants without order or direction.
A bit of spider’s web drifted around Barton. He plucked it away. A thick mass of web blew against his face; he tore it quickly away. Now the spiders themselves were visible. Hopping and hurrying through the brush, up the side of the slope. Like rising gray water, a furry tide, lapping from rock to rock. Gaining speed as they came.
And after them, the rats. Scurrying shapes that rustled dryly, countless glittering red eyes, yellow fangs twitching. He couldn’t see past them. But someplace beyond were the snakes. Or maybe the snakes had come around the other way. Probably they were creeping and slithering up from behind. It made sense.
A Wanderer shrieked, stumbled back and collapsed. Something tiny and energetic leaped from it and onto the next figure. The Wanderer shook it off, then stepped down hard. A golem. Something flashed wicked white to the night gloom.
He had armed his golems.
It was going to be ugly. Barton retreated with the other Wanderers, away from the edge. The golems had come around the sides; nobody had seen them. The moths cared about the spiders and nothing else; they hadn’t even noticed the running, leaping figures of animated clay. A whole pack of golems dashed toward Hilda. She fought wildly, stepped on some, tore others apart with her hands, smashed another as it tried to climb toward her face.
Barton hurried over and crushed a pack of golems with his tire iron. The rest scurried off. Hilda shuddered and half fell; he caught hold of her. Needles were sticking from her arms and legs, microscopic spears the golems had left. “They’re all around here,” Barton grunted. “We don’t have a chance.”
“Where’ll we go? Down to the floor?”
Barton looked quickly around. The tide of spiders had already poured over the lip of the ridge. In a moment the rats would be along. Something crunched under his foot. He recoiled. The cold body of a snake moving toward Hilda. Barton retched with disgust and kept moving.
They had to keep moving. Back toward the house. Wanderers were fighting on all sides, kicking and stepping and struggling with closing rings of yellow-toothed shadows and leaping three-inch figures with glittering swords. The spiders weren’t really much good; they had scared off the moths and that was about all. But the snakes…
A Wanderer went down under a pile of gnawing gray. Rats and golems together. Things of dust and old hair and dry filth. He could see better; the sky had turned from deep violet to stark white. In a while the sun would be coming up.
Something stabbed into Barton’s leg. He smashed the golem in half with his tire iron and moved back. They were everywhere. Rats were clinging to his trouser cuffs. Up and down his arms furry spiders scrambled, trying to get webs around him. He broke away and retreated.
A shape appeared ahead. At first he thought it was one of the Wanderers. It wasn’t. It had come up the slope with the horde. Slowly and awkwardly, trailing after them. It was in charge. But it wasn’t used to climbing.
Momentarily, he forgot the rats and golems biting at him. Nothing he had seen so far had prepared him for this. It took a while for him to comprehend, and then it almost swept his mind away.
He had been expecting Peter, of course. Wondering when he would show up. But Peter had been down on the valley floor. He had been touched by the reconstruction, by the growing area of the park.
Peter was formed after the Change. What Barton had known was only the distorted shape. The thing weaving and quivering in front of him had been Peter. That was its false shape, and that false shape was gone. This was its real shape. It had been reconstructed.
It was Ahriman.
Everyone was scattering. All the Wanderers were fleeing toward Shady House in crazed panic. Hilda disappeared from sight, cut off by a slithering carpet of gray. Christopher was fighting his way free, with a group of Wanderers, near the door of the house. Doctor Meade had forced his way to his car and was trying to get the door open. Some of the others had got into Shady House and were barricading themselves in their rooms. Useless last-ditch fights, each of them cut off, isolated from the others. To be torn down, one by one.
Barton crushed golems and rats underfoot as he retreated, his tire iron swinging furiously. Ahriman was huge. In the shape of a human boy it had been small, cut down to size. Now there was no holding it. Even as he watched, it grew. A bubbling, swelling mass of gray-yellow jelly. Particles of filth embedded in it. A tangled web of thick hair, clotted and dripping as the thing dragged itself forward. The hair quivered and twitched, sprouted and extended itself in all directions. Bits of the thing were deposited down the slope, the way it had come. Like a cosmic slug it left a trail of slime and offal as it went.
It fed constantly. It was bloating itself on the things it caught. Its tentacles swept up Wanderers, golems, rats, and snakes indiscriminately. He could see a rubbish-heap of cadavers littered through its jelly, in all stages of decomposition. It swept up and absorbed everything, all life, whatever it touched. It turned life into a barren path of filth and ruin and death.
Ahriman took in life and breathed out the numbing, barren chill of deep space. A frigid, biting wind. The blight of death and emptiness. A sickening odor, a rancid stench. Its natural smell. Decay and corruption and death. And it continued to grow. Soon it would be too big for the valley. Too big for the world.
Barton ran. He leaped over a double line of golems and raced between trees, giant cedars growing by the side of Shady House.
Spiders fell on him in torrents. He swept them off and hurried blindly on. Aimlessly. Behind him the towering shape of Ahriman grew. It wasn’t exactly moving. It had stopped at the edge of the slope and anchored itself. Writhing and twisting, it jutted up higher and highe
r, a mountain of filth and bubbling jelly. And as it grew, its cold chill settled over everything.
Barton halted, gasping for breath and getting his bearings. He was in a hollowed-out place beyond the cedars, just above the road. The whole valley, in its early-morning beauty, was emerging from the darkness beneath him. But over the fields and farms and houses a vast shadow was falling. More intense than the one lifting. The shadow of Ahriman, as the destroyer-god expanded to its regular proportions. And this shadow would never lift.
Something slithered. A shiny-backed body lashed at Barton. He twisted away frantically. The copperhead missed, drew back to strike again. Barton hurled his tire iron. It caught the snake dead center and crushed its back into a pulp.
He snatched up the iron just in time. Snakes were everywhere. He had come across a whole nest of them, crawling laboriously up the side of the slope. He was walking on them, tumbling and falling into the hissing mass undulating furiously beneath him.
He rolled. Down the slope, through the wet weeds and vines. Then he was struggling to get up; spiders darted and hopped, stung him in countless places. He fought them off, tore their webs away. Managed to get to his knees.
He groped for his tire iron. Where was it? Had he lost it? His fingers touched something soft. String. A ball of string. With sickened misery he pulled out handfuls of string. The tire iron had faded back. The last blow. The final symbol of his failure. He let the string fall numbly from his empty fingers.
A golem leaped on his shoulder. He saw a flash, the abrupt glint of a needle. The needle poised before his eye, an inch away, point ready to plunge deep into his brain. His arms came feebly up, then were enmeshed in foul tangles of spider web. He closed his eyes hopelessly. There was nothing left. He had failed. The battle was over. He lay waiting for the thrust…
14
“BARTON!” THE GOLEM shrilled.
He opened his eyes. The golem was busily slashing the spider webs with its needle. It speared a couple of spiders, drove the others off, then hopped back to his shoulder, close to his ear.
“Damn you,” it piped. “I told you not to talk to anybody. This was the wrong time. Too much opposition.”
Barton blinked foolishly. His mouth opened and shut. “Who…?”
“Be still. There’s only a few seconds. Your reconstruction was premature. You could have ruined everything.” The golem turned to stab a gray rat trying to reach the artery behind Barton’s ear. The corpse slid slowly away, still warm and pulsing, feet twitching. “Now get up on your feet!”
Barton struggled. “But I don’t—”
“Hurry! With Ahriman free there’s no condition to be kept. It’s no holds barred, from here on. He agreed to subject Himself to the Change, but that’s over with.”
Incredulous, Barton identified the voice. It was shrill, high-pitched, but familiar. “Mary!” He was dumbfounded. “But how the hell—”
The tip of her needle-sword pricked his cheek. “Barton, you can do what has to be done. Your work is ahead.”
“Ahead?”
“He’s trying to get away in his station wagon. He doesn’t want his real self back. But he must come back! It’s the only way. He’s the only one with power enough.”
“No,” Barton said quietly. “Not Meade. Not him!”
The golem’s sword lifted to his eye and paused there. “My father must be released. You have the ability.”
“Not Doctor Meade,” Barton repeated. “I can’t…” He shook his head numbly. “Meade. With his cigars and toothpick and pin-striped suit. That’s where He’s been!”
“It’s up to you. You’ve seen his real shape.” Her final words cut deep into Barton. “This is why I brought you here. Not for civic reconstruction!”
A snake slithered over Barton’s foot. The golem hopped off his shoulder and started after it. Barton struggled up. The webs holding him had been cut. A whole flock of bees appeared. Day was coming. More and more bees appeared. That would take care of the golems and the rats.
In a blind daze, Barton slid and stumbled down the steep slope to the road. He peered stupidly around. Doctor Meade had managed to get his station wagon going; a mass of rats and spiders and golems and snakes covered it in a squirming curtain. Meade was feeling his way inch by inch along the road. He made the first turn, hesitated with one wheel over the lip of the edge, then righted the car and continued.
Behind him, above him, the sluggish mass that was Ahriman continued to grow. Its feelers snaked their way in a widening circle, groping, clutching, carrying things to the jelly mass. The stench was overpowering; Barton retched and retreated. It was already up to staggering proportions.
He reached the road. The car was gaining speed. It careened wildly, missed a turn, and crashed into a guide-fence. Rats and golems flew in all directions. The car shuddered, then came creakily on.
Barton hoisted a boulder. There was no other way. He’d never get through the layer of crawling gray—and the car would be past him in seconds. As it shot directly toward him he crouched, got his weight under, and hurled the big rock with all his strength.
The boulder did its job. It struck the hood of the car, bounced and skidded, and smashed through the windshield, on the left side. Glass flew everywhere. The car veered crazily—and came to a grinding, crashing halt against the base of the slope. Water and gasoline gushed from the cracked engine. Rats and spiders poured eagerly through the jagged hole in the windshield, glad of the opportunity to enter.
Meade scrambled out. Barton hardly recognized him. His face was a broken mask of terror. He ran wildly away from the station wagon, insane with fear, straight down the center of the road. His clothing was torn, skin ribboned and slashed by countless yellowed teeth. He didn’t see Barton until he crashed head-on into him.
“Meade,” Barton snarled. He grabbed the staggering man by his collar and hung onto him. “Look at me.”
Meade’s vacant eyes glittered up at him, as Barton dragged him to a stop. He panted like a mute animal. No sight. No reason. He was out of his head with terror. Barton couldn’t exactly blame him. An ocean of gray shapes was pouring down the road, eager for the kill. And above everything else, the vengeful shadow of Ahriman grew larger and larger.
“Barton,” Meade croaked. “For God’s sake let go of me!” He struggled to get away. “They’ll kill us. We—”
“Listen.” Barton’s eyes were fixed on Meade’s quivering face, only inches away. “I know who you are. I know who you really are.”
The effect was instantaneous. Meade’s body jerked. His mouth flew open. “Who I—am!”
Barton concentrated with all his strength. He held tight to Meade’s collar and summoned each detail of the great figure, as he had first seen it, from the ledge, that morning. The majestic giant, cosmic in his silence, arms outstretched, head lost in the blazing orb of the full sun.
“Yes,” Doctor Meade said suddenly, in a strangely quiet voice.
“Meade,” Barton gasped. “You understand? You know who you are? Do you realize—”
Meade pulled violently away. He turned awkwardly and stumbled off, down the road, hunched over like an animal. Then he stiffened. His arms flailed out, his body jerked, danced like a puppet on a wire. His face quivered. It seemed to melt and fall inward, a shapeless pool of wax.
Barton hurried after him. Meade collapsed. He rolled in agony, then leaped up. Convulsions swept over him, frenzied vibrations that snapped his limbs out, head back, reeling and falling blindly.
“Meade!” Barton shouted. He grabbed hold of the man’s shoulder. The coat was smoldering; acrid fumes stung his nose, and the coat ripped away. Barton spun him around and grabbed him by the collar.
It wasn’t Meade.
It wasn’t anybody he’d ever seen. Or anything he’d ever seen. It wasn’t a human being. Doctor Meade’s face was gone. What had hardened and re-formed was strong and harsh. He saw it only a second. A sudden glimpse, the hawklike beak, thin lips, wild gray eyes, dilated nostrils
, long sharp teeth.
A shattering roar. A cataclysmic force that mashed him flat. He was blinded. Deafened. The whole world burst loose in front of him. He was spun back, flattened. Rolled over and left behind. Smashed by a blazing fist that penetrated him and disappeared into the void beyond.
The void was everywhere. He was falling. He fell a long way, utterly weightless. Things drifted past him. Globes. Luminous balls. He caught at them foolishly; they ignored him and went on drifting.
Whole swarms of glowing balls flitted around him. For a time he thought they were night-flyers, gray moths that had caught fire. He slapped at them, only vaguely alarmed. More surprised than anything.
Then he noticed he was alone. And it was completely silent. But that wasn’t so strange. There was nothing to make noise, no matter whatsoever. No earth. No sky. Only himself. And the steamy void.
Water was falling around him. Huge hot drops that sizzled and seared on all sides. He could feel thunder; it was too far away to hear, and anyhow, he didn’t have any ears. And no eyes. He couldn’t touch, either. The luminous balls continued to drift through the scorching rain; now they passed through what had been his body and calmly out the other side.
A group of the luminous balls seemed familiar. After measureless time and much thought he managed to place them.
The Pleiades.
It was suns drifting around and through him. He felt aimlessly alarmed; tried to pull himself together. But it was no use. He was spread out too far, over trillions of miles. Gaseous and vague. And slightly luminous, too. Like an extragalactic nebula. Spanning numerous star clusters, infinite systems. But how? What kept him from…
He was dangling. By one foot. Head downward, twisting and turning in a billowing sea of luminous particles, swarms of suns growing smaller each moment.
More and more suns swept past him on their way out of existence. Like a deflated balloon, the sphere that was the universe fizzled and danced briefly and closed in around him. Its last moments were too short to be counted; all at once it leaped wildly and vanished. The floating suns, the luminous clouds, were all gone. He was outside of the universe. Hanging by his right foot, where it had once been. Now what was there? He twisted around and tried to look up. Darkness. A form. A presence holding him.
The Cosmic Puppets Page 11