23
Tedesco and Kiera walked in front of the gypsy wagon, while Chaney sat in the driver's nook and urged the horse on both with slaps of the reins and with gentle psionic images of eventual reward for its efforts. Jask and Melopina walked to the left of the wagon, at the edge of the crumbling roadbed, holding hands and occasionally conversing telepathically.
Above them the snowy Gabriel Fit Range gleamed ghostily in the moonlight, fifty kilometers above them as they entered the mouth of Boomer's Pass. Jask was commenting on their beauty when the first power rifle opened fire on them. The energy bolt caught the horse and killed it instantly.
Pures!
The wagon turned nearly striking Jask and Melopina.
They dived off the broken concrete and stone.
The wagon rolled backward down the steep incline for a hundred meters before Chaney succeeded in applying the hand brake. The dead horse, fallen in its harness, left a trail of dark blood to indicate the path that had been taken.
Jask leaned against the curb wall at the edge of the road and risked a look up the hillside. He could see three Pures stationed in the center of the way, kneeling with rifles brought up to their skinny shoulders. Tedesco was running for the side of the road, ushering Kiera ahead of him. The Pures fired. A bolt of energy either passed so close to the bruin that it singed him or actually struck, for he screeched, both aloud and telepathically as he leaped to safety in the heavy brush at the edge of the highway.
Another energy bolt struck the wagon.
The vehicle shattered into a hundred smoldering pieces.
Jask hoped Chaney had been far from it when that happened.
It's kill or be killed, Melopina 'pathed.
A moment later one of the Pures was consumed by flames, threw down his rifle and, screaming, ran blindly down the road, flailing at himself. In the space of a dozen meters he fell, dead.
A second Pure flamed up.
Ahead, from the foliage on either side of the road and from the piled boulders at the brink of Boomer's Pass itself, more energy weapons opened fire on the espers. The curb wall beside Jask and Melopina exploded into boiling fragments.
The third Pure, who had been the last man exposed on the open road, had turned to run for the shelter of the rock formations above, but went only fifty meters before the magic fire scorched him. He fell and rolled down the road, past Jask and Melopina, no longer a man but an ember.
Tedesco 'pathed, We make out nearly a dozen more.
That wagon was my father's handiwork, Kiera 'pathed. Those bastards will pay for that.
They never reckoned with Kiera's temper! — laughing, Chaney.
Tedesco, were you hit? — concerned, Jask.
Singed.
The worst thing is the stink of smoking fur! — Kiera.
I see another one, Melopina 'pathed. A second later a Pure who had stood up in the rocks to see what the espers might be doing was ashed.
Chaney just joined us over here — Tedesco.
You're bleeding! — frightened, Kiera.
A few splinters from the wagon, nothing serious — Chaney.
Let me look! — Kiera.
Woman, Chaney 'pathed, we've got more immediate problems than tending to cuts and scratches.
He's right, Tedesco 'pathed. If those Pures stay hidden in the rocks, we can't very easily reach them with our fireballs. We've got to get closer, and we've got to make them expose themselves. He thought a moment, their best strategist, and 'pathed, I'll work my way up toward the pass on this side, while Chaney and Kiera wait here. Jask, you work up the road on that side while Melopina protects your back.
Good enough.
Have you got your power rifle? — Tedesco.
Yes, but—
Use it first. They know the fireballs are our weapons. If they see their own getting killed by their own weapons, we'll sow a bit of confusion.
I see.
Let's move it, then.
Melopina grabbed him as he started forward into the dense brush, kissed him hard.
Neither of them said or 'pathed any last warning to be careful.
Jask initially moved farther away from the road, then circled slowly back as he neared the crest of the hill, making almost no noise in his bare feet.
Small animals, startled by his stealthy progress, dashed away through brambled tunnels. These did not frighten him, for they were now on the edge of civilized lands and were no longer in the Chen Valley Blight, where monsters of one sort or another were most to be expected.
The scrub brush, stunted locust trees, and brambles gave way to fair-sized pines that grew thick and closed out most of the moonlight. Jask proceeded more carefully than ever through these, gliding from trunk to trunk, giving his eyes time to adjust to the change in light. He had gone perhaps two hundred meters into the stand of pines when he heard voices: Pures.
Something here, he radiated.
Pures? — Tedesco.
I see them now, three of them, stationed near the curb wall of the road, waiting for something to happen.
Get them, Tedesco 'pathed. I've seen nothing over here, yet.
Be careful — Melopina.
He crept forward, still using the trunks of the trees as shelter, until he was only a few long steps from the Pures. Each, he saw, was armed with a power rifle, and each was extremely agitated. They were all peering through a berry bush down the deserted road. Apparently it had not occurred to them that the espers might sneak around behind them and take them by surprise. Their lack of insight made Jask realize what a disservice the Pure way of life was for those who embraced it; it generated ignorance, naïveté, and a vulnerability that was appalling.
Jask bent onto one knee, raised the power rifle and sighted on the nearest Pure.
His finger on the trigger, he hesitated. These were, after all, men he had once called his brothers. Their bond of blood had been broken because of his genetic faults — yet, all those years of common ideals, common heritage, common doubts and hopes, could not so easily be erased. He had killed in the enclave in order to escape. That was surely murder. But that had been in desperation, at a time when he had been terrified of dying. Now, he knew how superior he was to them, knew that in any contest these weaklings could only lose. To confront them like this and destroy them seemed grossly unfair.
Suddenly, however, one of the soldiers caught sight of him from the corner of an eye and, spluttering with surprise, whirled to bring up his own rifle.
Jask killed him.
One of the other soldiers shouted, fired.
The bolt missed Jask.
He fired again himself, twice, and ended the battle almost before it had begun. His superior musculature and his improved reactions were no match for those soft, pampered men.
That's got them in an uproar in the pass! — Tedesco, chuckling.
Are you all right? — Melopina.
Fine.
You get all three? — Chaney.
Of course, Jask 'pathed.
He went by the corpses and without looking down at them crept farther up the hillside until he broke from the trees and entered the jumble of rocks where the other soldiers waited…
24
Shortly after midnight, with clouds drifting across the pocked face of the moon and the snowy caps of the Gabriel Fit Range dimming in sympathy, the five espers walked through Boomer's Pass, carrying their supplies on their backs. They were not opposed by any more of the Potest-Amon Enclave's Pures, for none of that patrol had survived the previous hour. They passed the silent, twisted bodies without looking down at them, descended the Killicone Highway into that civilized region known as the Plains of Hammerau.
I wonder if we haven't overestimated ourselves, Jask 'pathed to the others.
In what way? — Kiera, showing rows of fangs in a curious smile.
I wonder if we're really a new breed of men, superior to all the men who 've come before us.
Witnessing death, any man begins to doubt himself
, Tedesco 'pathed.
Jask 'pathed, If we're really a new breed, superior, special— why should we have to kill? Murder is a primitive art.
Murder is the sport of primitives, Tedesco agreed. But that is all the more reason why we must protect ourselves from them— by whatever means necessary. There are so few of us, that we cannot afford to lose a single member of our community.
Jask was not satisfied. If murder is the primitive man's tool — and if those Pures, those non-espers, are more primitive than we are — why did we prove superior as killers?
We had better weapons, Tedesco explained.
We were more primitive?
All we did was survive, Tedesco 'pathed. That's the first law of evolution: The new breed prospers at the expense of the old — otherwise the race is stymied and never changes.
Just the same, Jask 'pathed, I hope we don't have to kill any more men. Animals, Wildlands beasts — that's different. But no more men. We lessen ourselves with each such murder.
Chaney 'pathed, There's one other thing I think is a sign of primitive cultures, besides their willingness to kill for other reasons than survival.
What's that? — Jask.
Chaney 'pathed, They're riddled with goddamned moralists!
Tedesco laughed aloud, and Melopina giggled at Jask's side.
My husband the philosopher! — Kiera.
Chaney 'pathed, I'm serious. Civilized men should be able to sense the difference between a right act and a wrong act, should know what evil is and what good is. He should not require self-appointed or group-appointed moralists to tell him what he must and must not do. I've been fed up with preachers all my life, men of small stature and a need for power, leeches that feed on other people's guilt.
Agreed! — Tedesco.
Jask sighed. I can take a hint, especially when it's delivered with such force. We killed because we had to.
Because they forced us to — Chaney.
Would you rather have been killed yourself? — Kiera to Jask.
No.
Or have seen Melopina die? — Kiera again.
No!
Chaney 'pathed, You see, then, that morality is always relative — except to the primitive.
They rested only twice during the long night, traveling on foot along the Killicone Highway until they were only five kilometers from the tainted village of Dragontuck on the banks of the wide, swiftly flowing Hair of Senta. Here, they left the road and on a series of smooth stones crossed the river at its widest point, where the water was the shallowest. On the far side they struck southwest through the Plains of Hammerau, toward that next pocket of the Wildlands known as Smoke Den.
Because the only nearby Pure patrol had been obliterated, and because they were no longer in the unsafe Wildlands, they went those long night hours unmolested and, shortly after dawn, made camp in a series of convenient limestone caves twenty kilometers from the town of Darby's Harbor and the Pure enclave of Majestic Apple.
Tedesco took the first watch, while the others made their beds.
Jask and Melopina chose to sleep beneath the same blanket, farther along the tunnel from Chaney and Kiera, where they might be alone. They held each other for a long while, kissing, nipping, 'pathing. When they undressed each other with eager hands, they were both keyed to a fever pitch of desire. Beneath the soft blanket she lay back raising and spreading her legs as Jask found and entered her. They rolled and tossed as they made love; they 'pathed their happiness back and forth, permitted each other to slide into their neural systems to sense the sex act from the opposite viewpoint, moving, moving, into several long explosions of sensation and then, late in the afternoon, into a short sleep.
Later, as they coupled once more, he 'pathed, I love you.
She 'pathed the same.
You and me.
She 'pathed, Us.
The two of us, always.
The five of us! she 'pathed back at him. He was certain that her projection had been augmented by other minds — precisely, three other minds — but he did not care about the intrusion. An esper might never have total privacy — but then, being an esper, he no longer required it.
Melopina and Jask slept little that day, but were ready to begin the trek again after nightfall. Chaney, Kiera and Tedesco were also in a very good mood. Triumphs had been shared.
Three weeks after they entered the Plains of Hammerau they left them once again, climbing down into that Wildlands sector known as the Smoke Den and, in past ages, as Satan's Balls, the Stone Kettle and Ghosts' Cauldron. The rounded stones were smooth underfoot, wet and treacherous. They reached the floor of Smoke Den without casualty, however, their breath labored in that humid atmosphere.
Here there was no plant life.
Here no animals prowled. At least none they could see.
Here the air was still, stale.
All that moved, aside from the espers, was the fog, which was everywhere and thick. It clung heavily to the ground, thinned as it rose, but still obscured the stars and made a fuzzy blotch of the sun.
They slept in a fog blanket.
They walked through veils of mist.
They breathed it in and out, ate it with their food, made love with it pressed over and between them.
The land in Smoke Den was a jumbled mass of rocks, impossible shapes and textures of stone. They made a game of identifying images that some of the stones presented: Here a horse reared onto its hind feet, there the head of a man, to the right a spaceship rising on a column of smoke, to the left a winged man poised for flight. This was the first time during their journey, that they were able to relax — pursued neither by Pures nor tainted nor beasts — and they were in high good humor when, two weeks from the Plains of Hammerau, they came over a stony rise and looked down on the fogless black plain that had, for so long, been their goal.
The field of black glass was four kilometers in diameter, as shiny as if it were diligently polished every day, ringed by stones but containing none within it, like an enormous dance floor dropped down in the middle of nowhere. The “craters” referred to on Tedesco's map were actually faults in the glass. It appeared as if, when the glassy pool was solidifying after whatever disaster had caused it, bubbles of gas had risen to the surface in steady streams, forming tunnels and jagged openings.
I don't see anything that looks like a spaceship. It seems as lifeless as a cemetery — Chaney.
You would know about cemeteries, Kiera 'pathed.
Chaney grinned wolfishly. I used to be a grave robber.
Not really, Melopina 'pathed, shivering.
Yes, really. Sometimes a traveling musician runs across a town of tin ears and doesn't earn his daily bread. When that happens, he either uses his wits or starves. I've never starved— not so long as there was a cemetery nearby, and a local church of Resurrectionists.
Those who believe the actual corpse is revived and made to live again, come Judgment? Tedesco asked.
The same, Chaney 'pathed. They bury their dead with possessions — often jewels, silver and expensive leather goods. I've bought many a meal with the proceeds from grave robberies — and if the Resurrectionists are right and some of my victims come to life again without the advantage of personal wealth to set them up, I trust their god will see to it that they're properly compensated for their misfortune.
Well, Tedesco 'pathed, there are no graves to rob down there. But there might be a fortune to be found if this proves to be the station of the Presence.
They searched the tunnels for an entire day, carrying hand torches, walking along slick-floored corridors, shadow images of themselves reflected in the onyx walls, twisted and sinister in duplication. A soft, cool breeze poured constantly through the subterranean avenues, though they never managed to find the source of it. The moving air raised a hollow whistling sound in the polished runnels, an eerie groan that caused Jask goosepimples and kept him looking behind for some pursuing beast.
I don't believe this is the place, Tedesco 'pathe
d at last. If the Presence was ever stationed here, it left long ago.
Perhaps it's dead — Chaney.
You sound like Jask.
I didn't mean to say we'd quit here, Chaney 'pathed. In any case we'd be fools not to go on.
Jask 'pathed, All day I've sensed the presence of — something. I can't clearly say what. But just at the edge of my esp perceptions I register a psychic force of some kind.
Me, too, I think, Melopina 'pathed.
The Presence? — Tedesco.
Not that, I'm sure, Jask 'pathed. It's more of a cacophony, a wild noise, than it is an ordered consciousness.
I don't feel it — Chaney.
Nor I — Kiera.
I'm blank, too — Tedesco.
Jask shook his head. Imagination — maybe.
But that night, when they camped at the edge of the black glass field, he could not sleep, certain that the force/creature/entity he had sensed was hovering over them, observing them, or crying for recognition across a gulf as wide as all Time.
In the morning they read the maps, charted their course to the Glacier of Light, and set out once more. Jask could not tell if the unseen creature were still with him, though he felt strongly that it was.
25
The Watcher dreams of friendships lost, times passed, companionships long forgotten. It dreams of home, the brood-holes of the mother world, the bees of fertilization, and the hives in which it has, millennia passed, endured a million moments of ecstasy. It dreams of seas with living water, of a sky with three suns. It dreams of touching and being touched…
It stirs.
It feeds.
The tickle it has felt for some days has grown worse, a reception of certain psychic energies whose emanation is the whole reason for the Watcher's being here in the first place. The tickle is not bad enough to wake it. But soon, it will be annoyed and rise up…
The Second Journey: The Glacier of Light
26
Merka Shanly contrived to be in a public place — seated in the enclave's senso-parlor, experiencing a prewar emotion film-when the official announcement was made.
Nightmare Journey Page 13