The Golden People

by Fred Saberhagen

  "Give me that." Merit took the pointed staff from him. "I can't throw as well as you can. You keep the others off."

  Adam picked up rocks. There was always some chance, with geryons, if you could fight back enough to hurt them at all. Geryons waited and watched, and followed, and waited some more. They always waited, if they could, until you were too weak to hurt them. Adam hurled rocks downslope at the following pack, and kept on climbing.

  Now he diverged slightly from Merit's course, hoping that the animal ahead of them would be more likely to retreat if they came at it from two different directions. He still had the hunting knife, and he held it ready, out where the geryon could see it. Adam was sure that the damned things were able to recognize a weapon.

  Merit climbed straight toward the waiting beast, leveling the pointed stick at its head.

  "Wait!" Adam staggered closer. "Let me get—"

  She jabbed the spear at the geryon's face, just a second too soon, before the animal might have backed away. Adam heard its teeth bite through the foolish stick as he lurched forward, stabbing the hunting knife into the beast's leathery neck, trying to turn it away from Merit. The geryon's lunge at her became panicky flight the instant it felt the knife. It trampled Merit blindly and galloped downhill, seeking the safety of the pack; and again the rest of the pack hung back briefly, startled.

  Merit lay on the rocky ground. For a moment Adam could touch the blurred confusion of her mind. He put the knife between his teeth, tasting geryon blood, picked up Merit and slung her across his shoulders.

  He staggered up the hill again. The pursuing geryons still delayed, watching the wounded one as it leaped and twisted, trying to bend its long neck enough to snap at its own wound. Adam ceased looking back; before the animals got near enough to attack, he would be able to hear them coming on the loose rock.

  He climbed. Merit on his back was still breathing, and was not bleeding very much. He would stop when he could, and do what he could to help her.

  He climbed. Until a time came when there was deep, cool shade around him…

  … then he was aware that more time had passed, and he was lying on his back, after someone or something had just rolled him over. His eyes opened to the sight of a geryon face half a meter from his own, and he slashed up at it instantly with the knife that was still in his hand, carving the human nose.

  The animal screamed and reared up like a horse. As it spun around to flee, its foreleg struck Adam's right arm. The knife flew away, and he thought for a long instant that his arm had been torn off. But the limb still hung from his shoulder, bleeding, and with a heavy numb pressure inside it that was soon going to turn into pain.

  The pack of animals had backed away again, and were content now to sit in the sunshine twenty meters away, and wait. Merit was lying close beside him, but just out of reach.

  He called to her, but she did not move or answer. She was still breathing. Her eyes were closed, her face was drawn, but there were no geryon teeth marks on her yet. Adam looked for the knife but could not see it anywhere. That was almost a relief; if he could see the knife he would have to try to crawl to it and get it back.

  Sitting up, he got his back against cool stone. Slowly he realized just where he was. They had reached the shadowed base of the Ringwall. He knew the great smooth stones around him towered on up into the sky, but he could see neither the stones nor the sky very well just now, nor think about them clearly.

  Now Adam saw that one of the waiting geryons had caught a little animal of some kind. And now the pack found some amusement in killing the creature as slowly as they could. They never allowed themselves to become completely distracted by the lesser game. Always one of the pack was watching Adam. Soon, now, you will be weak enough, the patient yellow eyes informed him. We can make you last much longer than this little animal.

  Adam got to his feet, without thinking about whether such movement might still be possible. The packs were long gone, food and medicine gone with them. Canteen still here—Merit had it clipped to her belt—but Adam knew that the canteen was empty. Water gone, then. And now the knife gone too.

  He got himself over to Merit somehow, and got his one operational arm around her, and picked her up. Then he half carried, half dragged her deeper into the cool shadow. There was a doorway waiting for them there, within a recess and then another recess of the towering stone, or at least they came upon an opening of the proper size to be a door. Adam looked at it as calmly as he would have looked now at blank hopeless walls. Holding Merit, keeping her from falling, he limped forward into a passage that was large enough to let the geryons follow.

  Adam followed the passage. He knew without looking that the geryons still pursued. There were no branches, no agonizing choices of which way to go. There was light enough to see the way, daylight, he supposed, filtering in somehow from overhead. He wasted no effort in trying to fix the source of light. Merit moaned as she walked, leaning on him. She said nothing, and half the time her eyes were closed. There were odd blocks of stone, projecting from the floor and the walls. Adam bumped into them and fell on them frequently.

  He thanked whoever might be responsible that his injured arm had not yet begun to hurt. Or maybe it was hurting, and he was just too far gone to know the difference.

  There were many turns in the passage, all of them with sharp, right-angled corners. Sometimes at a corner Adam looked back, and when he looked there was always a geryon head sticking around the last corner, watching him carefully. Here the animals could follow only in single file, and they were being very cautious. The thing for prey to do was to get into a smaller passage, where geryons could not follow. But there was only this one wide passage, filled with light enough to see, when Adam's eyes could see, and stone blocks on which to fall.

  Adam stumbled into a pool of water a few inches deep, formed by a small stream that came gurgling merrily and for no apparent reason from a plain fount in the wall. He drank and wallowed in the pool, and took the canteen from Merit's belt and filled it up again. He waved his useful arm, and shouted echoes at the geryons when they dared creep closer. He splashed Merit, and thought he got her to swallow a little water from his cupped hand. He himself felt shivering and sick and unreal after his drink; he didn't want to revive, didn't want to know what was happening to him.

  He was moving on again, somehow, holding Merit up with his good left arm. They came upon Ray, sitting crosslegged in the passage.

  "I've thought about the geryon," said Ray, in conversational greeting. Now it was Ray's face that was changing in and out of its proper shape, altering, bulging, sagging like wet plaster. But Ray did not mind. He said: "They're not just animals, you know. They're something more."

  "They're after us now, Ray. They're right behind us." Adam slumped down, unwillingly, his legs just giving out beneath him.

  "I know what they are," said Ray.

  "They're animals and they want to kill us and eat us. Ray. Can you—"

  "No, not mere animals, Adam. I am considering, evaluating, the possibility that the geryons are really the Field-builders themselves. They are the ones who really built…"

  Ray paused. His face, handsome once again, frowned lightly. "What was it that they really built?"

  "Ray. Listen. Can you get Merit out of here somehow? Teleport with her?"

  "You see, Adam. First, at the bottom of the scale, there are vegetables… no, start with viruses. Or perhaps one should really start with rocks…"

  "Ray."

  "… and vegetables, and then there are animals, and then comes good old Earth-descended Homo. Sap. And then at the top are Jovians."

  "Ray, I'll listen to it all some other—"

  "The ladder of created being," said Ray in a loud firm voice. "That's what C.S. Lewis—do you know him?—wrote somewhere… but he was wrong. Very wrong. Because that is all there are…"

  "Ray."

  "Rock, vegetable, animal, human, Jovian. We're at the top. Now I am considering the possi—the pos
si—I am thinking about…"

  "Ray."

  "Lemme think. I—can't—think—" Ray's body distorted into new frightfulness; a moment later he once more flickered away out of sight.

  Adam stared stupidly; had Ray really been there at all, this time? Adam's arm was throbbing violently now. He must be feverish. He looked around and saw a geryon watching him, from the last bend in the passage, watching with those yellow eyes, like those of a dead thing. The geryons were real enough.

  The animal stretched its neck forward, the human face as always lacking any expression except for the illusion of pride. Was it at long last impatient, ready to charge? Adam got to his feet.

  Merit's mind touched his again; now it was as if he could hear her calling to him, out of a foggy distance. Adam, leave me, go on, look for help.

  It took no courage to say no to that. There was no place in the world for him to go, if he left her.

  Some time later, they were again limping along in glaring sunlight. Adam realized that they were now inside the Ringwall, because now the day-light was much brighter, and around him there were tall trees and tall stones, and towering, unidentifiable shapes that he had not seen outside. But it didn't matter. Soon everything would be over. He kept expecting to feel teeth.

  At one point he realized clearly that he was crawling up a little slope, moving on his knees and his one good hand, and that Merit was standing beside him, trying to pull him along. Then they were sitting together, side by side, backs propped against a wall, looking down a little slope to where the familiar geryons—almost old friends by now— peered from among tall rocks to see if their victims were yet weak enough. Merit looked as if she had passed out again. Good. That was good. She might never feel the teeth.

  Chapter Twenty

  A frightening thought came to disturb Adam's calm. It was that he might be able to get up and go on farther if he really tried. It would be much easier just to sit here and be chewed to death. But he couldn't just sit here, that was impossible. There welled up in Adam a terrible puny rage, a fury like that of a sick old man, against the animals. He would not them defeat him, destroy him and his woman. He could not. He groped with his left hand for something, anything, to use as a weapon. Like an animal, he growled at the other animals that menaced him.

  They cringed away uneasily. But not from Adam. They looked around, raising their leathery ears beside their human faces. They turned and looked behind them, aiming their tails in his direction. Then they retreated prudently between tall rocks, to watch and wait. Someone was approaching from that direction. Or something was.

  A figure wearing heavy Space Force ground armor emerged from among the tall rocks, a little distance beyond the geryons. The figure came walking, with steady powerful strides, straight toward Adam and Merit.

  "Our plan has succeeded," said a voice at Adam's side. Ray's voice. Ray sat there on the ground. His face still showed what Adam's hands had done to him, but his shape was normal again, as he sat watching the walking figure approach.

  The newcomer halted a few meters in front of them. Through the transparent front of the ground-suit's helmet a man's face was plainly visible… and Adam thought that he had seen that face somewhere before. Somewhere, somewhere.

  "You're not real," Adam accused him suddenly. "We're in the Field here. Your groundsuit wouldn't work if you were real."

  "But my suit does work," the stranger's air-speaker replied calmly, in what sounded like a native Earthman's voice. "Therefore we are not in the Field. Not right here."

  Ray stood up, towering taller than the other. "Now I have you," Ray said to him majestically. "Your race is in my power. I am the supreme being of the universe, do you realize that? I have come to harrow your dungeons, release your prisoners, destroy your power."

  Merit was still passed out.

  Ray's mad rambling voice seemed to be reaching Adam's ears from a distance. Not in the Field, the man in the groundsuit had said. Not right here. What did that mean? Adam couldn't think. His mind was running itself to death in a little circle of animals and rocks.

  The man in the suit had said something to Ray, and now Ray was speaking again, arguing with him: "—no, I am not human. I am much more than that."

  "But you are human," the stranger answered. "And so are we. Did you think that we who built the Field were more than that? You have a small idea of what being human means."

  "I am not human."

  "I have never understood you Earth-descended, though I know you better than most of my kind know you. Because I have lived among you."

  "Alex Golden," Adam croaked, suddenly remembering. Both of the other men turned to look at him. Merit did not turn her head. She was still out cold.

  Ray only seemed annoyed by the interruption, but Golden—yes, it was he all right—gave Adam interested attention.

  "Yeah, that's me," the man in the suit said, in a different, more ordinary voice. "The only Alex Golden that ever was. This is my planeteering outfit." He raised a gauntleted hand and gestured at himself; whether he meant the suit alone, or suit and body both, Adam could not tell.

  Ray's annoyance had grown. "Lived among us, did you? That's nothing! I can change my shape, too!" He demonstrated. "I can get free your prisoners."

  "We have no prisoners. Your mind has torn itself on its own weapons," Golden told him, watching bizarre alterations with little apparent interest.

  Adam could feel a wave of faintness coming over him. "Help us," he asked, of anyone who would listen.

  Golden turned back to him. "Most of my kind would not take notice of you here. It's not that we're your enemies; Kedro here sees our minds only through his own hate, he fills our images with his own sickness. There are no torture chambers here, except the ones he has imagined. But most of us would simply not take notice. Our minds and yours are vastly different. I think it's only because I lived so long on Earth that I realized you were here now."

  "I am no human. And I can do more than you can do! I am going to turn you into a telepathic frequency converter." Ray stood beside Golden, grabbing at the smaller man's armored sleeve. But even Ray was not going to be able to push around someone wearing heavy ground armor, and Golden was not perturbed. The Jovian towered beside him like a giant child, fretting and plucking, demanding more attention.

  "Help, then," Adam whispered.

  "I've already told you," said Golden. "All you need to know. You can do the rest."

  There was a silence. Ray stood clenching his hands and staring helplessly at Golden. But Ray was being ignored.

  Adam suddenly pushed himself almost erect, leaning against the rock behind him. Every time he blinked his eyes, the figure in armor wavered, like everything else in his field of vision. But it did not disappear.

  "Your suit works," Adam croaked. "So there's no Field here, inside the Ringwall."

  Golden regarded him calmly, but gave no other answer.

  "So seven years ago your scoutship had room enough, altitude enough under the Field, to pull out of its fall. It landed here, as you knew it would."

  Maybe Golden smiled, just a little, inside the helmet.

  Ray sank down on his knees, suddenly, with a loud cry. "No! I must be more than human!"

  Golden immediately crouched down too, as if he wanted to keep on a level with Ray to speak to him. He waved at the skulking geryons. "Those are only animals, no more than animals now, no matter what their faces say. Once—they were more. Consider that. We are above them, you and I. Above the human, there is nothing, or one life-form only. Is there not pride enough for anyone in that?"

  "One life-form only…"

  "Not you, my sick man, no, not you. Those sane beings who say they see it call it God."

  Ray shook his head slowly, slowly. "I am more than a man. More than a man."

  "There is much pain, too, in being human," Golden said. "But there is only one way we can turn to rid ourselves of that. And that is backward."

  "I defy you, Field-builder, torturer." I
t came out as a mad scream. "I will destroy you yet!"

  Now Adam could no longer see Ray anywhere. The big man had disappeared again. But Adam could spare no time or strength for Ray, wherever he might be. Adam was thinking, and thinking now was as hard a climbing a cliff. He dared not slacken his grip for a moment.

  "The scoutship is still here, then," he said aloud, staring at Alexander Golden. Adam could feel the throbbing in his arm, going faster and faster. The sun shone down on him. He was awake, he must be. "Even if you're not real, it's still here, crashed or landed. A lot of it would survive a crash. At least there'll be a first aid kit."

  Golden stood erect again. Now his head turned to one side, so that his eyes looked toward the open space, the vast unroofed center of the Ring-wall. Then he too was gone.

  Adam stood up straight with a gasp, lurching away from the rock that had supported him. Only Merit was still with him now. He bent over her and slapped her, trying to wake her up; she only moaned. With his one good arm he dragged her to her feet. His bad arm had started to hurt like hell now. Good. It would keep him awake.

  He laughed aloud, and there was a mad horrible echo from the laugh, and the geryons who had started to come out shrank back again among the rocks. Maybe he had been keeping the pack at bay for an hour with the loud sounds of delirium, maybe this time neither Ray nor Golden had been any more than fever dreams. But it didn't matter. Because, somewhere near here, landed or crashed, the scoutship had to be real.

  He shook Merit by the hair. "C'mon, get moving, kid! We've got to travel!"

  He got her walking down the slope, angling away from the geryons, taking the direction in which Golden had turned his head.

  In the middle of a grassy meadow the scoutship waited undamaged, in perfect landing position. As Adam finished the last dragging step, he could hear the geryons moaning behind him, still not quite daring to charge and kill the beings who had fought them for so long.

  If an illusion cast a long shadow in the afternoon sun, if it felt like solid smooth metal when you leaned against it, then an illusion was enough, no one could ask for more. Adam was gathering his strength to knock on the ground level hatch, when it swung open. The standard model planeteering robot stepped out and caught him as he started to fall.