Walk to the End of the World

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  With a wrench, Bek thought of Kelmz, who would have gone into the Wild to search out non-human creatures had he been given time. For all of his brilliance, how small Maggomas stood next to the memory of the dead Rover officer!

  Servan, still fascinated, asked what Maggomas would do with a fem like Alldera.

  ‘She’s cut out for breeding your sons and Eykar’s, if she’s smart enough to have intelligent offspring — as I assume she is, since she’s in private service. Individual ownership of fems will be ended, of course; it’s inefficient. Plans will be made for them on impersonal, rational grounds. Now, the smarter she is, the more careful you have to be that she stays out of mischief. You can’t keep her pregnant all the time; it lowers the quality of the cubs. But between her gestation periods you can put her in charge of the working throwbacks.’

  ‘But didn’t you say that you wanted the throwbacks drugged to keep them quiet?’ Servan said. ‘How could they work, then?’

  Patiently, the old man explained. ‘It’s only your more dangerous types, the less controllable and less capable ones – near to beast level, you could say – that you’ll want to sedate. The fems at higher stages will be a multipurpose resource. They won’t be fit to breed men from, of course, only to mate and produce more of their own kind — like the Dirties, in fact. Well directed by your intelligent breeding-fems, these intermediate Dirty-types can replace most machines as we run short of metal for repairs. We’ll have to feed them more grain so they can do heavy work, but they’ll get exercise on the job, so it balances out: activity keeps up the muscle-tone, restricts the build-up of fat and improves the flavor at the same time.’

  ‘Flavor?’ echoed Servan.

  ‘Flavor, flavor,’ repeated Maggomas, impatiently, ‘of their meat. Haven’t you been listening? I’m talking economy, total utilization of the few resources that are going to be left to us. You can’t run a Reconquest on a bulk-food like grain, so you use throwback fems as meat, a food that young men can pack in quantity on long expeditions. We’re going to rationalize society into a small group of superior men subsisting primarily on the meat, skins and muscle power of a mass of down-bred fems.’

  He jumped to his feet, leaning toward their stricken faces. ‘Why else would I have had the ’Troi fems killed, if not for their meat? You didn’t think I could pack ‘Troi with enough lammins and lavers to feed my men for long – we would need a dozen ’Trois to hold that much seaweed!’ In a conciliatory tone, he added, ‘Eating femflesh seems bizarre to you now, but believe me, you’ll get used to it. You have no choice; you’ve already started.

  ‘Ask your own fem, here, about it; she’s a cannibal herself. What do you think is in that curdcake that they eat?’

  At last, Alldera looked up, straight into Bek’s eyes. She was smiling a fierce, wild smile.

  Servan surged from his seat, stumbling backward a step so that his chair crashed over on the tiles.

  ‘You don’t think,’ Maggomas protested, ‘that we’ve been so crude as to feed you your own carry-fems! We recognize that there are claims, familiarities that men must be educated out of. In a way, though, it’s too bad. You would feel differently if you’d begun your flesh-eating at its best – in fresh steaks, instead of the dried chips that were cooked up in your stew.’

  Servan doubled over and began to retch, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. It was at him that the Armicors were looking when the inner tide crested in Bek, lifting him effortlessly to his feet, his body pivoting for the blow, his spirit a storm. His right hand clenched like a hammerhead, and he whipped it in a tight arc to smash with all his power into Maggomas’ face.

  24

  Alldera crouched under the retaining wall near the top of the southern slope. The stones at her back were wet. In front of her, tall yellow bunch-grass formed a screen. The first light of morning was quenched to gray by the fine rain that had been falling for hours.

  ‘Troi was taken. During the night, one of the great guns had blown itself apart, ripping up a section of the palisade. City men had poured, roaring, through the gap, and the explosions that followed in series had burst first the work-buildings along the river’s course and then whole sections of the rest of the town. Mines must have been set off by the retreating ’Troimen, leaving the victorious Citymen with a handful of ashes. ’Troi’s smoke rose this morning from hills of rubble.

  She could see a few of the conquerors on the palisade. Two small City patrols were quartering the lower reaches of the valley for stray ’Troimen. The rest of the invaders were gathered on the docks, quarreling with one another as they stowed their meager loot in the barges. The dead lay pale and tumbled along the palisade; they had already been stripped of everything worth taking.

  Alldera, watching, sat on a hip-pack she had stolen on her way out of the town and stuffed with provender salvaged from the kitchen of a deserted dormitory. She chewed a plug of lammin. Not that she was hungry – her belly felt bloated and cramped, either from the onset of menstruation or from the strange food she had eaten at Maggomas’ table — but she had been running and hiding all night and knew she needed food. Through the unfamiliar covering of trousers, she rubbed the muscles of her legs.

  Lethargy weighed her down. She felt no triumph yet at having slipped the leash of the men’s authority.

  She had not seen the blow that had smashed the bone of Raff Maggomas’ nose deep into his brain. The vision she remembered was of his body, stretched out on the terrace between the two parapet lamps. Their light had efficiently illuminated the dreamlike muscular flutterings into which he had subsided.

  No one touched Bek. He stood gripping the back of Maggomas’ chair with his dark-spattered hand, staring intently past the head and shoulders of the kneeling Second — the man who had been Maggomas’ closest aide. The Armicors pointed their guns at Bek, and at d Layo who had sprung to his side, but all eyes were on the dying man; until the Second spread his jacket over Maggomas’ face and looked up blankly from where he knelt.

  They all started when Bek spoke in level tones to the Second:

  ‘Arrest me, execute me if you dare – but you’ll no longer be Second here when your negligence is recognized. Or you may continue as Second in ’Troi — Second to me, as Maggomas’ heir, in which case I take the entire responsibility for his death.

  ‘Did you think that he could hand over power to me like a fem offering cakes on a tray? I am his son and successor as he said, but in my own time and on my own terms.’ Composed and imperious, he stood among his speechless enemies, his face streaked with his father’s blood.

  The Second got shakily to his feet and rubbed his palm raspingly over his mouth. He could not seem to meet Bek’s eyes. The other Armicors watched the officer for their cue.

  Bek commanded, ‘Have my father’s body taken into his rooms.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, the Second made the cross-sign with an unsteady hand, and several of the others imitated him: accepting the crossed wills of fathers and sons. Averting their faces, the Armicors lifted Maggomas and carried him inside.

  ‘Oh my soul,’ breathed d Layo. He looked dazzled, as though already living in the future which death and Bek’s sudden reversal had unlocked for them both. Recovered from his nausea, the DarkDreamer would certainly manage his next meal of flesh with admirable nonchalance — he was such an adaptable fellow, Alldera thought dazedly, as are we all.

  For here was Bek, buying life by seizing hold of the same future he had spat upon when his father had offered it – as if his refusal had been part of an ice-blooded plan to get his father’s place immediately and without constraints on his use of the power it brought him. It was incredible.

  Bek turned toward d Layo and said in the same clear, calm tone, ‘Second, arrest this man.’

  D Layo’s face turned vacant with shock. ‘What,’ he began, and faltered. He looked down at the Second’s gun, which was trained on his chest. ‘Why are you doing this? Eykar, I killed Bajerman with my own hands in f
ront of you today!’

  ‘Whatever that means to you, it means nothing to me,’ Bek said. He lowered himself into Maggomas’ chair, easing his hurt leg out stiffly in front of him. ‘This is a matter of politics, Servan. I will start fresh here; my close companions will be men of ’Troi.’

  He was lying, for he did not drop his gaze in a traitor’s shame, but watched d Layo as a man watched the receding shoreline of home from the ferry-rail.

  D Layo turned away, his hands balled into tight fists at his sides. Perhaps he was decoyed by his liaison with Bajerman into seeing jealousy where none was. Perhaps he had always feared (and hoped) that Bek would turn out no different, no truer, than he was himself. Perhaps he saw deeper, caught the gist of Bek’s intentions and instinctively played along in the direction of his own freedom and survival. He swung back again, crying.

  ‘You can’t steer these brutes to victory yourself, Eykar – you’re no stategist! You throw me away too soon for your own good! And what if ’Troi falls?’

  The Second, who had been looking uneasily from one of them to the other, interjected, ‘Troi will not fall.’

  ‘Is that ’Troi realism?’ d Layo jeered. ‘The Ancients fell, anything can fall! Eykar, you’re green at the treachery game, I don’t think you see it all yet. Are you sure you can take this smug idiot for your “close companion” – until he turns on you? However tired of me you may be – and I trust the lesson of your fickleness isn’t lost on this lucky fellow – can you actually put up with such a drastic – ’

  The last words were drowned in a crashing from the plain that made the terrace shiver underfoot. The Second smiled: ‘That’s why we’re not going to lose ’Troi. Those are our big guns opening up all along the palisade.’

  ‘Heroes’ weapons,’ d Layo snarled, ‘that kill anonymously from a safe distance!’

  The Second waved away the handpiece of the talk-box, which the box-bearer was holding urgently out to him. ‘Endtendant Bek, what’s to be done with this man?’

  ‘He’s to be escorted to the gate and turned out,’ Bek said, his eyes still on d Layo, his voice rough with a tenderness that he made no effort to disguise. ‘And see that he’s given a knife.’

  ‘He’ll join the City men,’ the Second objected. ‘He knows a lot about our set-up here, and that we’ve lost — our original leadership. It’s too dangerous just to let him go like that.’

  ‘I’ve given my orders, Second,’ Bek said.

  ‘For our good or for our ruin?’ the Second said, his hand hovering so that the gun he held covered Bek as well as d Layo. ‘You’re very anxious to get him out of here —’

  Bek looked at the Second at last. ‘I don’t want him killed. I’ve loved him all my life.’

  ‘Eykar, you hypocrite!’ d Layo burst out, his eyes glittering with tears. ‘Who paid your passage here, in sweat and submission to that old cunt Bajerman? Now that I’ve served your purposes, you order these yellow-guts to throw me out to starve, and you call that love?’

  ‘I’ve outgrown you, Servan,’ the Endtendant replied. ‘Say goodbye like a man.’

  D Layo stood hunched toward him – silent, hating, hopeless — all his natural grace cramped and spoiled.

  The Second’s doubts were gone. He ran his eyes over the men at his disposal, nodded to one of them, and ordered the others back to their former stations along the parapet. The one he had singled out moved toward d Layo, gun drawn. The Second turned to the talk box, though he kept his eyes on the DarkDreamer while listening to the voice from the handpiece.

  Suddenly d Layo strode forward, stooped, and kissed Bek long and hard on the mouth, as if to draw the life’s breath out of him.

  Bek offered no resistence; but the Armicor stepped in behind d Layo and reached out to pull him away. D Layo rammed an elbow into the pit of the man’s stomach, and the Armicor plunged backward into the talk box man and the Second.

  The DarkDreamer sprang onto the tabletop amid a clatter of flying dishes. Not even pausing to look down at Bek’s upturned face, he leaped onto the parapet and ran three steps along its length, then bent, pushed off with his spread fingers, and vaulted out into space.

  Shouting, leaning out, they saw him turn like a tumbler so that he fell on his back — into the web of lines that linked buildings across the street below the level of the terrace. The cables snapped free of their fastenings, lashing upward so that the watchers flinched back. D Layo’s fall was broken; he flipped again in the air, landed crouching in the empty street, and sprinted for shelter before the cursing Armicors had clawed their weapons out.

  The Second, shouldering other men aside, leaned far out, squinting, and yelled into the handpiece. He shook it and wheeled furiously on the box-carrier, who cried,

  ‘It’s the wires! That fucking maniac ripped down the wires!’

  The Second looked blackly at his handful of men, who would now have to carry messages on foot. He said, ‘I wouldn’t mind having that punk’s luck. By rights one of those cables should have fried him before he hit the ground.’

  ‘You misjudged your man,’ Bek said. But when the Second proferred his gun, butt-first, Bek shook his head. ‘You don’t have to surrender your command because of this. I’m not sorry he got away from you, Second. I wouldn’t want his blood on the hands of my friends.’

  Abashed, the Second backed off.

  Bek got stiffly to his feet, motioning Alldera to attend him. He turned with her toward Maggomas’ rooms, saying wearily to the Second, ‘I’m going in for a while. You’re in command here, Second. Instruct your men as you see fit.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the Second said. He was Bek’s man now.

  Bek favored his burned leg heavily. In the privacy of the dark front room, he sagged so hard against Alldera that she was obliged to stop and steady herself.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he muttered, taking a long breath. He let it out in low laughter. ‘Well, that’s Servan to the marrow! I tie myself in knots to arrange an escort out of here for him, and he turns around and improvises his own spectacular departure!

  ‘You must leave more discreetly —’

  ‘And you?’ she asked, knowing the answer.

  ‘Do you think I came here just to punch an old man in the face?’ he retorted. ‘I have more to do.’

  Yes; but she felt bound to offer him such wisdom as her kind had so painfully won: ‘It would take a man like Raff Maggomas to undo Raff Maggomas’ work,’ she said.

  ‘It took a man like Raff Maggomas to kill him,’ he snapped.

  ‘Undoing his work is the job of his son, if anyone. I’m going to obliterate him and everything of his. You understand me, don’t you? I think Servan did, too, to some degree. Everyone but that creature that called itself my father …’

  On some dark level all this made sense to her. She could think of nothing she could say to alter his resolve, nor any reason why she should want to.

  ‘Take the footbridge,’ he said. ‘After that, your best chance is to head out of ’Troi on the inland side where the fighting should be thinnest. That’s the way Servan will go, for the same reason. Show yourself judiciously among the rocks on the high slopes, and he’ll find you. You’re more valuable than ever now.’

  She twisted violently free of his hand, so that he stumbled and swore, catching at the furniture in the dark for support. Harshly he said, ‘You must see that if anyone can survive this upheaval it’s Servan and whomever he protects!’

  ‘Survival,’ she retorted, ‘is an overrated achievement. Survival as what? For how long? For what purpose? I understand you, and you understand nothing. You give the same moldy advice I’d get now from the Matris; you, of all people. Do you think you’re the only one with the right to say “no?” ’

  ‘So.’ He sighed. ‘We seem to be kin of some sad and foolish kind, and in spite of everything. But surely you don’t mean to put yourself into the hands of these —’

  ‘No.’ She moved closer to the map, beyond which the shadowy figure of the Seco
nd could be seen watching the plain, alone, from the parapet. ‘I’ll go inland.’

  Bek limped after her, speaking with sharp apprehension. ‘But how will you live? Winter’s coming!’

  ‘I expect I’ll starve. Frankly, I’d rather do that alone in the mountains than down here in the company of men eager to gnaw my bones.’

  ‘You’ll find no mercy in the Wild.’

  ‘Good!’ she cried. ‘I’ve had enough of what passes for that quality. Plain indifference will be a mercy.’

  ‘Even if you’re carrying a cub?’

  ‘There are cures for that, and neither men nor Matris in the Wild to prevent me.’

  ‘And if the Wild isn’t empty after all?’ he persisted. ‘If there are monsters?’

  ‘I am experienced,’ she snarled, ‘at handling monsters.’

  She stopped, surprised. It seemed she was one of the Pledged after all now, perhaps the only one – except for Bek, who was pledged in his own way.

  On impulse, she added, ‘You asked me once what you said about Kelmz, that night at the Scrappers’. I never told you.’

  In his silence, she became aware of the distant concussion of the guns. The sound made her jump with nerves. She hurried on. ‘What you said was that you were sorry; that it was unfair – Kambl was after you, not after Kelmz; that there were things you wanted to talk about, but there was no one to talk with seriously and deeply; that it was your fault. You were ashamed to have left him. You wanted to know him better. Sometimes you blamed him for throwing himself away, but most of the time you blamed yourself for leading him to his death. You said you were sorry.

  ‘None of it could have been taken for lust except by a jealous or mischievous listener. What you expressed was grief for a lost friend.’

  He lifted his head. ‘I’ve tried to keep Kelmz out of my thoughts,’ he said, bitterly, ‘because there seemed to be no way to think of him that didn’t shame both him and me. But it seems the shame is all mine.

  ‘I must be a mature man now. As a boy, I was reputed to have been a clever student, but I’ve been stupid lately.’ The dark shape of his hand moved over the glowing lines: from Endpath to Lammintown, and on down the coast. ‘Right from that grim ride south with those wretched pilgrims, to the fierce young men on the ferry, and your own people at Bayo - so alarmingly efficient and not nearly alien enough – that tangle of passions in the City, even Bajerman, even Servan, and you yourself. Everything has sharpened my eyes to know Maggomas for a monster when I met him. And I still couldn’t see something as simple as Kelmz and myself until you showed me just now.’