by L. P. Davies
Time had no meaning. Nothing existed save my private world of darkness, unbearable noise and misery. An age passed. Then at long last the pressure seemed to ease. The solid wind broke, becoming intermittent gusts. Slowly it abated, the din lessening. There were longer breaks between each vicious gust. Then it was over. I waited a few more minutes before raising myself a little, taking my arms from my dead, opening my eyes and looking round cautiously. It was still too dark to see clearly, but I had the impression of being out in the open, no longer enclosed within trees.
Gradually light returned. A few yards away Lee was on his knees, looking about him as I was doing. And we were back on the rocky slope where we had first arrived. I recognised—with no great feeling of surprise, for it seemed I had passed that stage now— the desolation of tumbled red rock. The woods and everything they had contained had vanished as if they bad never existed.
I pushed myself to my feet as Lee stumbled towards me. And it was clear that he too had lost the capacity for further surprise.
“Change of scenery,” he said. “Back to where we started. Or rather where we started has come back to us. I suppose if we stay in this damned place long enough we’ll get used to this sort of thing.”
He used his handkerchief to wipe sweat-caked dust from his reddened face.
“And what do you think about that sample of local weather? I hope to God it isn’t typical. I’m not sure I could survive another like that. My face feels like someone’s been over it with emery paper.”
My hands were painful too, stiff as if I had suffered an overdose of sunburn, but with a tingling sensation underlying the tension of the skin. There was a feeling of pins and needles when I came to flex my fingers.
I looked about me again, more carefully this time. It was certainly the same hill of our arrival in this dimension, but now we were on a different part of it. I could recall a certain grouping of the red rock, a rough pyramid with a spire to one side. Earlier, the pinnacle had been immediately behind the pyramid. Keeping my gaze on it, I made my way along the slope, the perspective slowly changing, until a spot was reached where, so far as I could judge, the landmark had resumed its original formation. I looked down and was pleased with the outcome of my little experiment. There, a little way down the slope, were the twin indentations where my heels had rested. I swung round then, hopefully, to look towards the summit of the hill. But it was bare, and so was the sky above it, a sky that was filled with the red haze of dust that was the aftermath of the storm.
Frowning, Lee had watched my manoeuvre; then his puzzled face cleared as he understood.
“A question of being thankful for small mercies,” said he. “At least we know where the door is. And we have the means of marking the site. That’s something we’d better do before the scenery decides to change itself again.”
There was no shortage now of stones with which to erect a cairn, although we had to search for those small enough to be moved. Collecting them, I was wary enough to keep a watchful eye on our surroundings—a precaution I was soon thankful for, because I noticed that my spire and pyramid landmark had suddenly vanished. For a moment I had the idea its disappearance might be the prelude to another change of scenery. Then I saw what had really happened. I let fall the stone I had been carrying.
“The mist,” I called to Lee, “is on the move. And coming this way.”
He straightened, turning to look for himself, absently flicking dust from the front of his now filthy shirt. “You sure?” He watched the mist. “Yes, so it is.” And then he swayed, steadying himself with one hand against the cairn. “And I’m beginning to feel tired again.”
I realised I was feeling the same. But not too tired, my mind not yet dulled enough to prevent me from linking the mist and the lassitude together. Something told me the two were connected, and the same something, instinct perhaps, warned me that danger lay behind that creeping wall of greenish vapour, that it was the product of some kind of intelligence.
Lee was having hard work to keep awake. But then he would be more susceptible to the emanations than I, for he hadn’t a full night’s sleep behind him. Fighting my own weariness I went to stand by him, gripping his shoulder tightly, shaking him until there was some reaction, until he opened his eyes to stare blankly at me. I urged him along the slope, guiding him between mounds or rock, choosing no direction in particular, my only aim to get as far away as possible from that insidious moving curtain.
When the ground levelled somewhat I changed course, moving away at an angle. As the distance between us and the mist increased, so the lassitude left me and Lee required less effort to keep him on the move. After a while, when I judged it safe—for the mist was now out of sight—I came to a halt, giving us both a chance to get our breath back. I looked about me, taking stock of these latest surroundings.
The dust haze which still persisted made it impossible to see for any great distance. All around, the weird landscape of grotesque rock-shapes, patchy brown turf, and occasional stunted palm-like trees reached away to become lost in the haze. Immediately ahead, silhouetted dimly against the sky, were the rounded summits of what could be either a nearby range of low hills or a more remote mountain chain. Under these conditions it was impossible to judge distances.
One of the small, leafless shrubs grew from a crevice at my side. I bent over it, dubious of the vicious-looking spines that projected from the contorted branches. They were easily capable of inflicting a nasty wound on any unwary hand or foot. I made a mental note to steer clear of them. One of the stunted trees grew nearby, and I went to study it more closely.
The trunk was an unwholesome grey in colour, and deeply indented, as if made up of a large number of thinner trunks welded together. From the top, about the level of my chest, protruded a tight mass of short succulent stems, looking for all the world like a bunch of peeled bananas. From these grew the large palm-shaped leaves, thick and green and glossy. The whole tree stood little more than six feet high.
The rest had given Lee time in which to recover. His inevitable grin was back as he asked, “Studying the local flora, Gerald?”
“What little of it there is.” I nodded towards the spiny shrub. “I have the feeling we ought to give those a wide berth.”
“I see what you mean.” Then his grin turned to a grimace. “Hardly the ideal site for a holiday camp. Rock and more rock. I suppose it must rain sometimes.” He stubbed the tree trunk with his foot. “This looks like it needs a lot of water to keep thriving.”
A fleshy-topped growth such as this did indeed give the impression of requiring a lot of water. That meant rain, and rain meant streams. Perhaps an over-optimistic chain of reasoning. In our world there are desert cacti that exist on little more than overnight dew. And this harsh landscape surrounding us now gave the appearance that rain had never fallen upon it at all. But there was water in this dimension. Or something that looked like water. That stream in the woods had seemed real enough.
“When you’ve finished your botanical studies,” said Lee, “we’ll press on. And I’ve no intention of being talked out of sampling the next stream we come across.”
So we set off again, aiming towards the hills. For all the haze, the sun was oven-hot on our shoulders. Heat shimmered, mirage-fashion, over distant shapes. There was no path to follow; it seemed no one had ever come this way before.
After a while we began to climb. The slope was so gradual that it was hardly noticeable. The hills were closer and a change was coming to the scenery. The patches of grass were larger and greener. Trees were more plentiful; once we were forced to make a detour to avoid having to plough a way through a small plantation of them. And once a small furry brown animal, not unlike a rabbit from the little we saw of it, scuttled in front of us—the first sign of animal life we had so far seen.
The detour had resulted in a change of direction. Now we were skirting the lower slopes of the hills rather than heading directly up into them. We stopped to rest again in a miniature ravin
e with a steep escarpment on one side that afforded some shade from the merciless sun.
Lee lowered himself to the ground, cringed at its heat, leaned his back against the rocky wall and wiped his face with an already filthy and sodden handkerchief. His appearance gave me a rough idea of what I must look like myself. Dust and sweat had combined to mat his hair and streak his face. His once white shut, now covered with red dust, was almost the same colour as his face. Even his spectacles were covered with a fine layer of red dust.
He took off one shoe, dragged off the sock, and moodily inspected a blistered heel.
“I suffer,” said he. “And not a soul cares. Not a damn soul. And this is only the part you can see. My inside feels like it had withered up. The state of my mouth is nobody’s business. I’d sell my soul—supposing there were any takers—for a long drink of ice-cold water.”
“Quit moaning,” I told him unsympathetically. I had never learned to know when to take him seriously and when not. I tried to forget my Saharan dew-reliant cacti. “It must rain here sometimes.”
“Yeah.” He massaged his heel.
A thought occurred to me. “That animal we saw … Surely animals of any kind, no matter where they live, have to have water.”
“So that stream could have been the real thing.” He replaced his sock and shoe. “And I let myself be talked out of it. Now we’ve got to find another stream. And something else too.” One hand shielding his eyes from the sun, he peered up at me. “Or had you forgotten?”
Forgotten? Then I saw what he was driving at. I had forgotten. But God knows, I consoled myself, with all the things that had been piling up one on top of the other there was excuse enough. Maver and his assistant were somewhere in this dimension. If they were still alive. They could have wandered for days in search of water without finding any. Or they could have finished up in those damned artificial woods and come across the beings whose specialty was mind-reading and turning thoughts into pseudo-reality. Both ideas were equally disturbing.
“The way we are,” I said helplessly, “there’s little we can do other than to keep on going in the hope that we may stumble on something, maybe a clue.”
“Nothing much we can do,” he agreed, still shading his eyes while he squinted into the haze ahead. Then, “‘I was watching the way the heat shimmers. Like a mirage almost, you know? Pools and palms in the desert. Something to do with reflected and refracted light. You don’t suppose those woods-could have been some kind of mirage?”
“Mirages aren’t solid.”
“Not in our world. They may be different here, And that tree I was clinging to when the storm came didn’t turn out to be very substantial.” I had been thinking earlier about that particular episode, remembering the uncanny sensation of something solid dissolving away in my grasp. But “dissolving” wasn’t the right word. My impression now was that the tree had first dwindled in size and then collapsed, like a snowman shrinking in the sunshine, melting away to become a pool of water.
“I was using the same tree,” I reminded him. “I know what you mean. But I thought we’d decided it was a waste of time guessing.” He lifted his narrow shoulders in a shrug. “Just an inspired idea. And here’s another—not that it’ll do us any good. You realise that all this is existing in the same space as our happy little world? For all we know, where we’re standing now might be a busy pavement with people bustling home to dinner. That’s if it’s dinner time back there. A bowl of fresh crisp salad, a couple of slices of cold meat, a jug of ice water—”
“And thou,” I finished more sharply than I had intended. “Let’s get moving again.”
“So near and yet so far,” he mused, coming to his feet. “I wish to God that Einstein had kept his blasted simultaneous worlds theory to his ruddy self.” He managed a grin. “We’ve got to blame somebody, and Uncle John’s presumably in the same pickle we are, with enough on his shoulders. All right, I’ll lead the way.”
And, because he was leading the way, Lee was the first one to notice a change of some significance. We emerged from a small ravine, crossed an open space towards a plantation of palms, and were on the point of changing direction to go round them when he stopped and pointed down at the ground.
There could be no doubt. We had come across a path. And, by the look of it, a well-trodden path at that.
My involuntary reaction was one of elation at this first sign of habitation. Then, as I wondered whose feet (and what sort) had levelled and hardened the ground, elation drained away and apprehension took its place.
Lee, I think, had gone through similar phases.
“What price Robinson Crusoe,” he said quietly, wary eyes on the trees ahead. “And what price our little green men. This is a bit different from finding a footprint in the sand.”
We went more cautiously after that. And by a cunning move on Lee’s part—or it may have been unintentional—I found that I was now in the lead.
And so I was the first to see one of the occupants of Dimension A. I emerged carefully from a clump of palms to find myself on the fringe of another clearing, with another palm plantation behind. And some-thing moved, disappearing too quickly into the shade of the distant trees for me to get more than a dim impression. But the shape was humanoid even though it seemed partially covered in brown fur.
Instinctively I dropped to my knees, dragging Lee down with me.
CHAPTER SIX
His dust-streaked features indignant, Lee was obviously on the point of voicing protest. I clamped my hand over his mouth just in time.
“I saw something,” I whispered in explanation, and took my hand away to point. “Over there.”
Our cover was two of the stunted palms that grew close together, their combined trunks giving adequate protection. I peered cautiously from my side while Lee did the same from his.
“You sure?” he whispered back. “I can’t see anything.”
“He was there.”
“Her?"
“It looked like a man,” I said. “At least, about the same shape and size.”
“What was it—” he started to ask. Then, at the far side of the clearing, leaves moved and parted and the figure reappeared, moving out into the open.
The brown fur resolved itself into some kind of animal-skin tunic, its brown colouring only a shade darker than the sun-tan of exposed face, arms, and legs. The shortsleeved tunic was tied about the waist with some kind of cord and reached to a few inches above the knees. Strips of the same fur were bound like odd-looking gaiters about the ankles. The feet appeared to be protected with sandals.
The man—it was a vast relief to be able to call him that—was short and stocky. A mass of thick, curly black hair reached low on the back of his neck. His eyebrows were heavily defined—the same colour and texture as his hair. His features were narrow and swarthy. A knife with a short gleaming blade was tucked into the cord at his waist. In one hand he carried what looked like a long thin bamboo cane with a small inflated leather bag at one end.
“Looks harmless enough,” was Lee’s whispered assessment. “Rural—oh, very rural. Back to the stone age, except for that knife. And what on earth’s that contraption he’s carrying?”
We found the answer almost immediately. The darkfaced man was working his way slowly along the fringe of the trees, his gaze intent upon the undergrowth. He stopped suddenly, freezing in his tracks, the bamboo tube coming up to waist level. There was a faint-sounding plop and something small and silvery lanced from the end of the tube. The man moved forward a few yards to pick up a furry brown body.
“So now we know,” Lee interpreted softly. “Out hunting. Pop goes the weasel. I wonder if that little fellow is destined for the stew-pot?”
“What’s more to the point,” I said, “is just how lethal is that weapon of his?”
Lee squatted back, rubbing his chin. “I see what you mean. Effective on small stuff, anyway. Some sort of dart. You saw it?”
“I saw it.”
The hunter, we
apon tucked under his arm, the furry body dangling at his side, made his way back across the clearing. He paused to collect more of the dead animals from the grass before turning to disappear into the trees. It could be that, hunting over, he was headed for home. And home, I guessed hopefully, if it was as primitive as his appearance suggested, would almost certainly be near a river or stream. It was only then that I realised just how parched I was.
“He could lead us to water,” I said. Lee was already coming to his feet. We crossed the clearing at a crouching jog-trot. That we could be going into danger was something I refused to think about. There was little room in my mind for any thought other than of the urgent need to find something to drink.
A path wound its way through the dark green shade of the small forest of palms. It was narrow, hemmed in closely by the trees, whose thick leaves met overhead to form an uncomfortably low ceiling that forced us to walk with our backs bent. That it was a much frequented path was clear from the way the grass had been worn away.