by Brian Ball
The incorporeal thing bayed, nearing.
Spingarn realized what had happened to the wolfman.
14
The broken ground suddenly gave way to the wide black road. Its surface was heavy blocks of a basaltlike stone; already, as Spingarn felt its heavy coldness beneath his bare feet, he sensed the aura of mystery which had gripped him in another, lost, existence.
The road that could not be a road, since it hung so impossibly in space; the strange and frightful things that had swept close to the road and then had veered away as if they had suddenly lost the scent of their quarry; the sense of fragments of existence poised to fling themselves into the space-time the four found themselves in; and the lunatic transformations which the three humans had undergone. All added up to the kind of Possibility Space where no laws of probability could function.
And yet they were here, in the Frames of Talisker.
And they had survived the first, deadly danger!
“They’re gone, Spingarn,” sighed Ethel. “Look, they’ve turned away.”
“I thought such would be the case, sir,” said the robot.
“God’s bloody boots, you scarlet ape, why didn’t you say so before!” roared Hawk. “If ye’d known the boggarts wouldn’t follow, you could have told us!”
“Not really, sir,” said the robot. “I am programmed to avoid distorting the laws of probability.”
Hawk shook his head. “Clockwork monkey! Frog trickery, I’ll be bound! What a place you’ve brought us to, Private Spingarn! I should have stuck to English ale and left your bedamned Frenchie stuff alone. See, the boggarts are yelling at us!” he looked uneasily around him. “What place can this be?”
In the dim light of a pair of tiny moons that had suddenly flashed over the horizon and then remained fixed and still as if at some command, Spingarn could see below them the insubstantial things that had struck dread through them all.
“They won’t follow, will they, Spingarn?” said Ethel, in a hushed whisper.
Spingarn could still see the remains of the wolfman on the dreadful orifice of the nightmarish things.
“They won’t follow us,” said Spingarn, as if repeating a lesson. “Why not?”
He was talking to the robot, but Hawk answered.
“Satan’s legions know His Majesty’s domains, Private Spingarn.” Spingarn knew that Hawk must be trying to work out his personal dilemma of orientation. The Sergeant reached for the bottle in his pack, shook his head, and said, “No! No more o’ that! No more booze!”
“What are they?” shuddered Ethel. “What do they want?”
Spingarn snapped at the robot:
“Well? Monitor them!”
“Use modern equipment on Talisker, sir?” the robot said doubtfully. “As Time-Out Umpire I have to rule such a procedure inadmissible. I can’t justify the use of——”
“This isn’t a Time-Out, blast you!” snarled Spingarn.
“Ah, sir, well. A pleasure!”
The muted baying of the things below grew less. The eerie grunting died away.
The three humans watched the stiff and still figure of the red-gold robot; its fur shone eerily in the light of the twin moons. A wind got up, and Ethel’s wings stirred. Finally, the robot spoke.
“As for the things down there, sir, I haven’t enough data for a satisfactory answer. They’re mindless. They’re not the product of any human experiment in cell engineering.”
“Then why did the boggarts chase us!” demanded Hawk.
“Why?” repeated Ethel.
Spingarn knew.
“They need something in the human cranium,” said the robot pedantically. “Curious, sir. They prey on the humans here.” It shook its humanoid head chidingly.
Ethel fainted.
“And the wolfman?” said Spingarn, though he had already guessed the answer to that question too.
“I can apply the probability laws here, sir. It was your contact, the Disaster Control agent. He was warning you to keep away from the road.”
“But the ghosts saw him,” said Spingarn.
“Yes, sir.”
“They got what they wanted,” said Spingarn slowly.
Ethel stirred into life.
“Those things!” she whispered.
“Gone,” said Spingarn. “They won’t come near the road.”
“Why?”
“Why?” said the robot. “Why, it’s a fragment, madam! It’s a part of the Frame-Shift factor! The ghosts, as you call them, won’t get mixed up in one of the old Frame barriers! That’s what the Disaster Control agent was trying to tell you, sir,” he said to Spingarn.
“But now we’re on it, what do we do?” said the girl.
As if in answer, the road began to move beneath them.
“Slay me with bodkins!” The Sergeant was bawling in amazement. “Pickle me body and send me to lie in the Spital! God’s bloody boots, Spingarn, what place is this? And what’s the Queen’s highway a-doing, shaking like a gut-bellied Spanish whore?”
Even in the midst of the weird events that were beginning to turn Talisker of dream into an eerie reality, Spingarn could feel pity for the totally disoriented Sergeant.
“Some of the Frenchies’ work, Sergeant,” he called. “Hold firm the Pioneers and we’ll fight clear of them!” To the robot he snapped, “Plot this, damn you—put it through a Probability Function and tell me what’s happening!”
The robot began to protest:
“I wouldn’t dare attempt to indicate what course of action you should take, Director Spingarn—I’m only too well aware of your exceptional qualities——”
“The road’s rolling!”
Ethel alone kept a more or less upright position. The others were pitched sharply backward. Hawk performed a slow somersault; Spingarn fell heavily onto the coil of his tail; and the robot allowed powerful stabilizers to maintain its equilibrium. Far below them, unseen things bayed and yelled.
“It’s taking us with it!”
Ethel was the only one to speak for a moment or two. Then Hawk ordered Spingarn to fetch a batch of grenades so that he could pitch them down into the blackness where a few amorphous shapes clustered obscenely. Spingarn ignored Hawk; the Sergeant was a problem which could be dealt with later. The immediate thing was to find some starting point of reference on this mad planet.
“Do it!” rapped Spingarn. “What do you think I brought you for, you damned piece of machinery! What’s this—this road we’re on! Why does it move? And where the devil’s it taking us!”
“You should know that, Spingarn,” murmured Ethel.
Spingarn growled meaninglessly at her; Hawk fumed in annoyance. The road began to undulate like a vast concrete and steel wave. They felt its movement, though how it produced motion and where it was taking them they could not say. The robot reluctantly allowed its circuits to perform the task of evaluation while Spingarn waited with impatience. At last it said:
“Probability doesn’t really work the way it should here, sir. I can do a best guess? Very well, sir. We’re at the junction of two old Frames. The road divides them. It’s a very early and primitive form of molecular barrier. On one side would be one reenactment of reality, and on the other, quite a different one. Originally there would have been a complete physical separation between each Frame—with this barrier as a cordon sanitaire. But now, sir, the Frames aren’t static. They’re subject to change at any moment. To Frame-Shift, sir.”
“Frogs?” growled Hawk again. “Monkey-Frogs? Is he a Frenchie, Spingarn? Shoot him—a spy, I’ve no doubts! Someone betrayed us—it was gold that told the Frenchies where to tunnel to find our gallery—push him off this blasted watch-tower, Spingarn—do it now!”
“In good time, Sergeant,” Spingarn said. He wondered if he had been wrong to select the man as one of his little team; still there could be a use for a man of his dedicated animosities. And he was a reliable man in a crisis. It would soon be time, though for all their sakes, to begin the difficul
t task of sinking the eighteenth-century persona that dominated Hawk’s every thought “We’re in troubled times, Sergeant,” he explained. “Will you trust me for now?”
“I’ll do that,” said Hawk, glaring at the red-furred robot. “But you’ll regret you didn’t put a bullet into him!”
Spingarn thought of a bullet tearing into the delicate machines within the robot; he shuddered. The robot was his link with the twenty-ninth century.
“The Sergeant?” asked Ethel, her tone putting the rest of the question together.
Spingarn looked at her. The wings were neatly folded. Why hadn’t Hawk reacted to her?
“Try to put him in the picture,” he told her. Maybe she would be able to bring Hawk into an awareness of the present situation.
“Yes,” was all she said. She stared at his tail in disgust.
Spingarn turned back to the robot:
“Outline what you think you have. I brought you along because you meta-robots have a reputation for efficiency. Prove you’re worthy of it!”
The easy flattery was effective. The automaton preened itself and dusted a few grains of sand from its red-gold fur.
“Yes, sir!”
“The road—it isn’t a road?”
“No, sir. Though a road’s been built along the top of the primitive barrier. And it does function in a way. It flows along the lines of the old fencing.”
“And where’s it taking us?”
“Best guess, sir?”
“Your best.”
“We’re intruders. It will pitch us off into what would have been the old interrogation center—if Talisker’s Frames had been working properly.”
“But they’re not.”
“No, sir. They’re subject to Shift.”
No. The Frames of Talisker were working at random.
“The ghosts?”
“Very uncertain, sir—maybe a local invention. I don’t think they’d have got in through Center. No amount of cell-fusion technology could have invented them.” The robot hesitated. “I don’t think they’re human at all, sir, and never have been.”
Spingarn felt a shadow of deadly fear trickle across the back of his spine. Alien!
The four super-robots had warned him already.
Were these the first manifestations of the Alien?
For perhaps five minutes, Spingarn watched tiny clouds flicker past as the strange road raced through the night. He saw a city blaze with light and then pass by as if snuffed out. Once a vast airship lumbered near to the road. It veered away with a burst of power from antique engines.
There was organized life on this planet.
But who, or what, organized it?
And what would this ancient barrier do with them when it slowed down? What would this black road, with its primeval blocks of paving stone, lead them to?
Ethel had calmed Hawk.
Spingarn looked at her, and then at the Sergeant of Pioneers.
“Sergeant,” he called. “I have a job of work for you.”
“By the devil’s bones, Spingarn, it’s an odd service you’ve called an old man to! Gawd, Spingarn, you with your tail and your fancy French piece in her shift—and me with a pair of iron legs, Spingarn! It’s a fearful thing you’ve done to an old soldier, lad!” But Hawk was showing every sign of enjoyment. “How can we serve the King of Darkness, lad?”
Even Spingarn was confused. But Ethel winked at him. He could see the bright moonlight reflected in her clear eyes, so he knew what was implied.
“The King? Yes, Sergeant!”
“No need to tell me more, lad! I knew an old reprobate like me would go to Hell, and I can’t say as I’m surprised now I’m here!” The Sergeant shook with laughter. “Ah, girl, I wish I’d know you down on English soil! A fine wench you must have been—though how you come to get a pair of wings I’ll not inquire!”
Spingarn recalled his own assumption on first emerging from the reenactment of the Siege of Tournai; he, like Hawk, had assumed that he was dead and in the mythological afterworlds which the primitives had believed in. It was a credit to the girl that she had encouraged Hawk’s picture of his surroundings. Then Spingarn saw Hawk grinning at him.
“You’re the Captain now, Spingarn, lad! You’re a greater devil here than I am, lad! Now, Captain, Captain Devil Spingarn, what devilment—saving your grace, lad!—are you planning?”
Hawk’s shining bottle-nosed face expressed extreme pleasure. He had looked like this, Spingarn remembered, when the steel-cased Frenchman had swum slowly through the air above the fields of Tournai, a glittering cartwheeling sliver of metal on the top of a holocaust. Hawk was the man for him. But the egocentric robot first. Spingarn needed to know just how far the robot would go in aiding him in this strange tangle of Frames.
“I can’t call you ‘Time-Out Umpire.’ It’s pretentious and it’s too long.”
“And it ain’t a Frog name,” pointed out Hawk.
The robot began to smooth its sleek red fur. “I quite understand your dilemma,” it said, making a tiny gesture at the Sergeant. “So skillful, if I may say so, sir! What a touch you have with the Primitives! We all admired so much your Chinese excursion.”
“A name,” Spingarn said firmly.
“Of course, sir! It would be quite wrong of me to think of myself as Umpire here.” It looked out at the blackness only slightly relieved by the two pinpoints of light high above. “We—er, we—meta-robots, sir, do in fact have a fancy for the Golden Age.”
“Spingarn, can’t you get it to stop talking?”
Ethel was impatient.
“Horace.”
“’Orris?” demanded Hawk.
“Horace,” repeated the robot coyly.
“Right, Horace,” said Spingarn. “Tell me the limits of your involvement. What can’t you do, first.” He suspected that the robot had been through roughly an equivalent of the gene restructuring which had so altered Hawk, Ethel, and himself; in the robot’s case, it would be a matter of rearranging circuits and imprinting cutoffs in the powerful weapons capacities. For instance, the automaton would not be able to provide fire power from the conventional phaser beams it should carry; it would also refuse to function as a launching pad for wave bombs.
“Yes, sir. My circuits don’t allow aggressive action of any kind.”
“Any kind?”
It was Ethel who had spoken.
“Ah, yes, madame. That is, no, madame. I should have said against humans.”
“So you can use phasers and wave bombs against non-humans?”
The robot hesitated, as if it were examining a list of rules.
“In extreme cases, sir.” It gave the robotic equivalent of a giggle, a kind of scratched snort that terminated in a series of electronic hiccups. “With your kind of reasoning, sir, I think you may take it that my powers are available to you.”
“But not against humans.”
“Directly or indirectly,” the robot agreed.
“Keep to your fusil,” said Hawk. “Treble-shotted and with good Woolwich powder. There’s nothing better for hot work, except a grenade.”
“I’ll think about it, Sergeant.” To the robot, Spingarn said, “Tell me what you are permitted to do.”
It was a mixed offering.
Although the robot could at various crises offer some weapons support, it wasn’t permitted to intervene in such a way that it altered the statistical possibilities in the Frames. What it meant was that only when Spingarn had found a way to resolve a problem could it be called on for help.
Until such a time, he had to rely on himself. On his own skills and his ability to act so as to manipulate the probabilities of a situation.
“So you can help me weigh up how to manipulate events, but not intervene, Horace?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Begin scanning,” he ordered.
“And me?” asked Ethel.
“Rest”
Marvell, comp, and the Guardians had said that she would be needed
too. How and where was as yet only a shadow in a far future. Ethel composedly relaxed.
“You’ve not forgotten me?” said Hawk. “Captain Devil, you’ve employment for an old soldier what’s glad to serve Old Nick?”
“Oh yes,” said Spingarn. “Never fear, Sergeant. Your talents are just what I need now.”
“An ambuscado for the boggarts? Shall we lay a mine for them? Surely they’ve a crypt or a boneyard to lie in what we can explode?”
“Maybe so. But not just now. You see this highway we’re on?”
“A marvel,” agreed Hawk, taking out a clay pipe and stuffing it with a honey-scented tobacco. “But what can you expect in Hades?” He struck flint with steel and the pipe glowed in the gloom.
“Finish your pipe, Sergeant, and then mine me a tunnel through the road.”
“We’re to go into its bowels and demolish it?”
“Just that, Sergeant.”
The robot turned from its slow quartering of the rolling horizons. “Orders?” it asked.
“Nothing for the moment, Horace.”
“It’s me and the Captain,” said Hawk. “Keep to your post, Froggie. This is work for the Pioneers.”
“You’ll wreck the road?” called Ethel, who was calmly watching them.
“We’ll wreck the road,” agreed Spingarn.
“How?” she asked.
“I kept a few grenades,” said the Sergeant, unlimbering a pack from his burly shoulders. “Ever heard of a Sergeant of Pioneers without the tools of his trade?”
“But what happens to us!”
“The road stops.” Spingarn wondered what mad world awaited them. “And we leave it, Ethel.”
“Let’s stay on it!”
“And be thrown into an obsolete interrogation center? We’d die there!”
She watched in strained fascination as Hawk gyrated. Soon the sound of stone blocks cracking filled the air. A human drill, Hawk roared out an obscene eighteenth-century chorus while he penetrated the black surface. Shards of stone splashed into the wet margins of the road; fragments of rock sprang up into the moonlight, to twist and turn and fly off into the emptiness below. Three or four bats, attracted by the activity, wheeled overhead until Ethel fluttered above the busy Sergeant to watch his spinning head; then the bats were off with shrill calls. Spingarn paused for the first time on the eerie planet. It began to dawn on him that he had accepted completely the zany predicament in which he had found himself.