Guardian

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Although some would call them simply stupid barbarians, we shall give them the benefit of the doubt.

  Varian was at the controls at the time and he was motoring along at a crisp eighty kays, creating a welcome breeze within the cab. Tessa was in the passenger seat, dozing, while Stoor and Raim remained in the rear section, sleeping. When Varian saw the Raiders, he called out for Stoor and Raim, who entered the front cab immediately.

  Tessa was given control of the vehicle, and the three men prepared their First Age weapons: Varian’s pistol, Stoor’s semi-automatic rifle, and Raim’s clip-loading scope rifle. Although Varian was dreadfully short on ammunition, the old man and his sidekick had spent a lifetime collecting rounds for their weapons and literally carried more ammunition than food on the journey. Stoor had said: “The food won’t do us any good if we don’t have the bullets to keep us alive to eat it.”

  How true. . . .

  The personnel carrier must have seemed like an easy target to the slope-browed thugs on horseback. It was long and shaped like a trapezoid, its wide treads chewing up the sand, kicking out rooster tails in its wake. There were no obvious armaments, no turrets or barrels, bristling from its sides. It must have looked like a piece of cake.

  But it was not.

  As soon as the horsemen drew within range of Raim’s scope rifle, he started picking them off. Despite the random pitching of the carrier and the motion of the horsemen, Raim proved to be an excellent marksman, bringing down five riders before they were within range of Stoor’s semi. By that time, however, they had correctly assessed the carrier’s firepower and had fanned out so that they would make more difficult targets. Varian was the last to be able to fire because of the limited accuracy of his sidearm at long distances. By the time he could shoot, you could almost count the nose hairs of the enemy, and there were still seven of them left.

  There was a clatter on the roof of the vehicle as one of the riders boarded. Stoor indicated as much and Varian headed for the hatch which opened on top, unsheathing his shortsword in the same motion. The man on top was no match for a student of Furioso, the weapons master of the modern world. Within seconds the bandit’s head had been separated from its shoulders and rolled into the vehicle’s wake. On top, Varian noted the Raiders, too, possessed several weapons but they appeared to be primitive hammerlocks. Probably copies of museum pieces, and therefore unreliable and just as dangerous to the shootist as the intended victim.

  The carrier had a blind side—the rear—and it was from that direction that the remaining six Raiders now rode in single file. Their obvious plan was to overtake the vehicle and board en masse hopefully overwhelming Varian. Stoor had by this time joined Varian on the roof and was ripping the air with his semi weapon. The problem with the gun was its small-caliber rounds which seemed to be having trouble penetrating the body armor of the bandits. He inflicted arm wounds on the two lead riders, but that was all. And considering that the Behistars were very tough, and very big fellows, that kind of wounding was not going to stop them.

  Stoor advised that they let the Raiders board so that they could be properly dispatched of. Varian was not of the same opinion, feeling that as long as there was some distance between them and the large pursuers, they had a better chance of survival. But Raim then joined them on the roof, and there was a quick vote taken.

  Varian lost, and the Raiders were allowed to close the gap. It was then that Varian was treated to a fighting display that was truly as spectacular as anything old Furioso could have ever been capable of. Little Raim became a blur of sweating flesh and flashing steel. The first two Raiders had barely grappled on to the edge of the carrier when Varian and Raim descended upon them. Varian saw a heavily muscled arm separated from the armored body of the first attacker, quickly followed by his head. Raim’s sword was as sharp as a Vaisyan palace guard’s.

  It took a bit longer for Varian to parry and riposte his attacker’s initial assaults, then he caught him with a side-slashing stroke through the waist and kidneys. Sloppy, but effective. The man went down.

  The remaining four Raiders decided to call it a day and started to fall away from the carrier, but Raim picked them all off with his scoped weapon. Varian was disposed to let them escape, but Stoor feared they would bring back a large enough force to eventually overwhelm the trio.

  It was, as adventures go, not a great one, but it was extremely instructive. It proved that each man could now respect the other and place more than a small amount of trust in that man’s protecting the other’s life. It also showed that the three men worked well together as a team, despite the differences in culture, personality, and age.

  Varian was beginning to think that they might, after all, be successful.

  This feeling persisted and was reinforced when they traveled through the remainder of the Behistar Republic without further incident. Either the absence of the first band of Raiders had stirred up enough respect for the carrier and its crew that the rest of the bandits kept their distance, or they were simply fortunate enough to have avoided anymore dangerous characters.

  They had been traveling for more than a full moon cycle when Varian picked up the first traces of the Ironfields on the Finder Screen.

  “The Finder’s going mad,” he said loudly to anyone who could hear.

  Stoor ambled forward into the cabin. “Ironfields, dead ahead. Ever see it?”

  Varian shook his head. “No. Heard plenty of stories, though.”

  “Ain’t the same. I remember the first time I was through there. . . . Ever hear of Giulio Seezar or . . . uh, General Patent?”

  “No, who are they?”

  “Couple of military men I used to travel with when I was a lot younger. Between the two of them, they knew just about all there was to know about fightin’. . . .”

  Varian continued to watch the terrain ahead, but spoke easily. “Well, what about them?”

  “Oh, yeah! Well I was with them when we came on to the Ironfields. Sun was just goin’ down, and we were droppin’ down out of G’Rdellia. There’s no tellin’ how far it stretches; it just goes on and on.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” said Varian. “Do you think it’s possible that the great battle that was fought there . . . do you think it might have been the Riken?”

  “And the Genonese?” said Stoor. “Sure, I thought about it. Makes a lot of sense to me. There’s so many stories about the ‘fields’ that nobody knows for sure what really went on there. Some even say that there’ve been hundreds, maybe even thousands, of battles fought there . . . like it’s some kind of magnetic place that draws men to it when they sense the time for a ‘final confrontation.’”

  “Like birds in migration . . .” said Varian.

  “Or lemmings, runnin’ to cliffs to kill themselves,” said Stoor. “You ever hear them stories. Crazy. Just plain crazy little critters!”

  Varian was not positive he knew what the old man was talking about, having never heard of “lemmings,” but he nodded as if he had. Varian was not in the mood for another story right then, especially about crazy little animals.

  The old man looked at the screen where the indicators were illuminating the first markers of the Ironfields, then he checked the sun’s position in the sky.

  “If we can keep up this pace, we’ll probably hit the ‘fields by sundown. That seems kind of appropriate, don’t it? Kind of poetic-like, I’d say.”

  Experienced traveler that he was, old Stoor was almost precisely correct in estimating the time of visual contact with the Ironfields. Raim was at the controls and Tessa was in the passenger seat when it happened.

  She called out to the others, who entered the cab to see the first dark, crumpled silhouettes on the horizon. The vehicle rambled closer as a light breeze carried warm air through the cab. Sand eddied and capped like sea foam around the twisted hulks, which rose up from the sand like grave markers. The sun was setting and the temperature was dropping rapidly—as though heralding their entrance to a
place which lay beyond the limits of space and time.

  Images and impressions crowded into Varian’s mind; he watched the looming shapes grow larger under the vehicle’s approach. Words and emotions fought for place and sense, but he had the feeling of being overwhelmed. They were entering a place of mystery and of myth . . .

  . . . a place of death.

  Nothing moved. Nothing lived in the Ironfields. As the machine moved deeper into the vast hulk yard, a silence descended upon them. Even Stoor was quiet as the group privately took in the horrible tableau. It was an unending gallery, filled with mazelike corridors of the grotesque, the unspeakable. A montage still life of end-moments for men and their machines.

  A burned-out tank with a carbonized skeleton still frozen in that slice of time when it had been a man struggling to be free of the glowing-hot hatch.

  The twisted, rusting remains of a great-engined aircraft lying in the vanguard of a plowed-up V of land, marking its last touchdown.

  A circular pool of superheated sand, now glazed over to form a diamond-hard slab, its smoothness interrupted by the eruption of a large, twisted piece of steel. The image is of a piece of untitled and very avant-garde sculpture.

  Machines and pieces of machines litter the sand like dead leaves. The wind slips easily through the countless edges and angles, occasionally rising to produce an eerie music which is a combination of a wail and the phrases of an atonal sonata.

  If one believed in them, the place could be aswarm with ghosts. The eidolons of a million soldiers crowd the open spaces, all drifting in the stoop-shouldered half step of forgotten tramps; as though condemned to shamble aimlessly through the ruins forever.

  Varian was the one to break the cold silence.

  “It’s like this all over? I can’t believe it. . . .”

  “Oh yeah, you’d better believe it,” said Stoor. “It goes on like this! On and on and on . . . thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of square kays.”

  “It’s like a museum,” said Tessa. “So cold and sterile. It’s like we don’t belong here. Don’t you get that feeling?”

  “I’ve had that feeling,” said Varian, looking at the incredible vista of destruction. As a trained fighter, he could understand the necessity for arms; he could respect the power of the machines and armies which had gathered here; he could even feel a twinge of the excitement, the glory which must have hung in the air like a burning mist. But all that notwithstanding, even Varian was horrified at the bleak testament of the Ironfields.

  It was the ultimate metaphor. The final image. The lasting monument to man’s need to study war once more.

  “Look at the Finder,” said Tessa, pointing to the screen where a flurry of blips danced like snowflakes. “It’s going crazy!”

  Stoor reached out, turning down the gain. “We’ll have to fine-tune it, adjust it so it will only be sensitive to electromagnetics.”

  “Can you do that?” Varian looked at the old man, wondering if this was the preamble to another tale.

  Stoor nodded. “Raim can. You don’t spend twenty years in Zend Avesta, hanging around the World’s most inventive folk, without learning something.”

  “What exactly are you talking about?” Tessa looked at him while Raim continued to navigate among the ruins.

  “All the old First Age stuff was run on little pieces of wire and chipboard. They called ‘em ‘crickets’ ‘cause that’s what they looked like. These little things sent out specific signals and the Finder can pick them up, if there’s any around. It just has to be told what to look for, see?”

  “Right,” said Varian. “We don’t need it to locate objects ahead anymore: We can see them plain enough. But if one of these wrecks is really the Citadel or the Guardian, we’d never know it.”

  “We could spend a lifetime checking out each wreck,” said Tessa.

  “All our lifetimes,” said Stoor, looking out the windshield. He rubbed his beard, eyed the sky for a moment, then spoke again. “Listen, why don’t we pack it in for the night? Raim can adjust the Finder. We’ll make camp. A good meal and plenty of rest. We’ll be busy for quite a while in here.”

  Everyone agreed and the vehicle slowly came to a stop under the shadow of a great machine which had moved on large spiked wheels, now transformed into pinwheels of iron oxide.

  The sky was high and cloudless as he walked with her on the perimeter of the camp. The stars were bright and cold above them, and the lyrical notes of Raim’s flutelike arthis wove expertly among the sheets of night silence. She held his hand tightly, and he could sense her on the brink of trembling.

  “Cold?”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Tessa, do you fear me?” His voice was calm and matter of fact. “Is that it, then? Or is it this place—this thing that we are doing?”

  “Maybe all of those things. . . . I don’t know, Varian. I’ve been thinking, and things are not right. I thought that my life was going to be different after I met you. After you saved me. . . .”

  “And it isn’t. . . ?” Sometimes Varian had the feeling that all women were of a similar essential nature that would be forever a mystery to men.

  “No, wait. Listen to me. You know my life. I’ve never had any control over it. Never! My father. And then the men he sold me to . . . I never had a chance to even think about controlling my own affairs. I never stopped to think about what I wanted. Except for one thing: I knew I never wanted to be with another man as long as I lived.”

  “I understand that,” he said. “You told me—”

  “Let me finish.” She gestured with her hand at the ruins which surrounded them. “I feel like a prisoner here. I feel totally oppressed, and I’m surprised that you and the others don’t feel it. It’s like a real presence here, hanging over us. I feel it, Varian, and it makes me think of what’s happened to me. What’s happened to my life.” She paused to rub her eyes, shake her head slowly.

  “Go on. . . .” He touched her shoulder and she pulled away.

  “It’s just that . . . I’ve had time to think about a lot of things since we’ve started the journey, and—”

  “And you’ve decided you don’t want to be with me? That’s all right, Tessa. I can understand that. That wasn’t one of the conditions of saving your life. . . .”

  Tessa smiled. “No, no! It’s nothing like that. No, Varian. And your saying that just proves to me again that you are a real man, a real person. I’ve met so few real people . . . but no, that’s not what I meant.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “It’s this search,” she said slowly, not looking at him. “It could go on for years! When I think about that, I could go crazy. I don’t think I want to spend that much of my new freedom doing this, but. . . .”

  “Don’t you realize what it could mean to us if we ever found the Guardian?”

  “Oh yes, of course. That’s not what I mean. Oh, Varian, you don’t understand, do you?”

  He could only shake his head. He wished that women could be more direct, more objective when discussing their own feelings.

  “What I mean, Varian, is that I don’t want to be with those other men. I don’t want to be with anybody but you. You’ve given me my freedom and I want to share it with you.”

  He was tempted to say: Is that all that’s bothering you? But he did not. He was both relieved and upset by her words. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her warmth against his chest, but he did not do this either.

  Staring into her eyes, he spoke softly: “I think I understand you, but I don’t know what to do. I mean, we are here; we are far, far from civilization. We cannot leave here now.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  “Then what do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know. If I were more of a romantic, I would tell you to say that you love me . . . but, I don’t know what ‘love’ is, and I guess it would be unfair of me to ask under such circumstances.”

  “Well, I am a bit of a romantic,
and I do think I love you, but that’s not what I meant either. You know that we can’t leave here without Stoor and Raim, and they won’t leave until they are convinced that the Guardian is not here.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then what? What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me, do you know where we will go from here if we find nothing?”

  “The Baadghizi Vale, I’d suppose. Why?”

  “Is there anything in between. Any cities?”

  Varian considered the question. “There’s the eastern end of G’Rdellia. No big cities, but some small ones, I’m sure. We’re off the established trade routes, you know.”

  Tessa nodded. “Do you think we might stop somewhere in G’Rdellia?”

  “Maybe. I’m sure we could discuss it with Stoor, even convince him to do so. Why?”

  “You know why.” She looked at him with intense green eyes.

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know, Tessa. I don’t know. You’re asking me to choose between two things that I’m not sure I can choose between.”

  She looked away, up to the crisp, bright sky.

  “At least you are honest about what you feel, what you think. I’ve never known any men that would do that, either.”

  “Let me think about it,” he said weakly.

  “What’s the fascination here, Varian?” She looked out at the dark shapes around them.

  He paused and stared at the shadowy things from the past. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. Just knowing that there were people before us, that all that we’ve done has been done before . . . I don’t know, it does something to me.” He drew a breath, and looked at her. “I don’t have the words, Tessa. But I feel it. I’m a simple man, I know that. But there’s something inside me. Something like a glowing coal that won’t burn out. I need to know! There has to be more to the World than what we see. . . .”

  He stepped back and gestured at the sky. “Look. Look up there. Some astronomers think that each star is like the sun. Big or bigger. Can you imagine then? Can you imagine what that means? That there might be worlds like ours around all those stars. I think the First Age knew that. I think that’s where they’ve gone if they didn’t kill each other off.