‘Where is he now?’ Crompton asked.
‘Just what is your interest in the man?’ the commander asked bluntly.
‘We’re related.’
‘I see. Well, I heard that Stack drifted to Port New Hazlen and worked for a while on the docks. He teamed up with a chap named Barton Finch. Both were jailed for drunk and disorderly conduct, got out and drifted back to the White Cloud frontier. Now he and Finch own a little trading store up near Blood Delta.
Crompton rubbed his forehead wearily and said, ‘How do I get there?’
‘By canoe,’ the commander said. ‘You go down the Rainmaker River to where it forks. The left-hand stream is Blood River. It’s navigable all the way to Blood Delta. But I would not advise the trip. For one thing, it’s extremely hazardous. For another, it would be useless. There’s nothing you can do for Stack. He’s a bred-in-the-bone killer. He’s better off alone in a frontier town where he can’t do much damage.’
‘I must go to him,’ Crompton said, his throat dry.
There’s no law against it,’ the commander said, with the air of a man who has done his duty.
29
Crompton found that Blood Delta was man’s farthest frontier on Ygga. It lay in the midst of hostile Grel and Tengtzi tribesmen, with whom a precarious peace was maintained and an incessant guerrilla war was ignored. There was great wealth to be gained in the Delta country. The natives brought in fist-sized diamonds and rubies, sacks of the rarest spices, and an occasional flute or carving from the lost city of Altereine. They traded these things for guns and ammunition, which they used enthusiastically on the traders and on each other. There was wealth to be found in the Delta, and sudden death, and slow, painful, lingering death as well. The Blood River, winding slowly into the heart of the Delta country, had its own special hazards, which usually took a fifty-percent toll of travelers upon it.
Crompton resolutely shut his mind to all common sense. His component, Stack, lay just ahead of him. The end was in sight, and Crompton was determined to reach it. He bought a canoe and hired six native paddlers, purchased supplies, guns, ammunition, and arranged for a dawn departure.
That night they were in a small tent which the commander had put aside for Crompton’s use. By a smoking kerosene lamp Crompton was stuffing cartridges into a bandolier, his attention fixed on the immediate task, unwilling to look elsewhere.
Loomis said, ‘Now listen to me. I’ve recognized you as the dominant personality. I’ve made no attempt to take over the body. I’ve been in good spirits recently and I’ve kept you in good spirits while we tramped halfway around Ygga. Isn’t that true?’
‘Yes, it is,’ Crompton said, reluctantly putting down the bandolier.
‘I’ve done the best I could, but this is too much. I want Reintegration, but not with a homicidal maniac. Don’t talk to me about monolithic personalities. Stack’s homicidal, and I want nothing to do with him.’
‘He’s a part of us,’ Crompton said.
‘So what? Listen to yourself, Alistair! You’re supposed to be the part of us most in touch with reality. And you’re completely obsessed, planning on sending us into sure death on that river.’
‘We’ll get through all right,’ Crompton said, with no conviction.
‘Will we?’ Loomis asked. ‘Have you listened to the stories about Blood River? And even if we do make it, what will we find at the Delta? A homicidal maniac! He’ll shatter us, Al!’
Crompton was unable to find an adequate answer. As their search progressed he had grown more and more horrified at Stack’s unfolding personality, and more and more obsessed with the need to find the man. Loomis had never lived with the driving need for Reintegration; he had come in because of external problems, not internal needs. But Crompton had been compelled all his life by the passion for completion, transcendence. Without Stack, fusion was impossible. With him there was a chance, no matter how small.
‘We’re going on,’ Crompton said.
‘Alistair, please! You and I get on all right. We can do fine without Stack. Let’s go back to Aaia or Earth.’
Crompton shook his head.
‘You won’t go back?’ Loomis asked.
‘No.’
‘Then I’m taking over!’
Loomis’s personality surged in a surprise attack and seized partial control of the body’s motor functions. Crompton was stunned for a moment. Then, as he felt control slipping away from him, he grimly closed with Loomis, and the battle was begun.
It was a silent war, fought by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp that grew gradually dimmer toward dawn. The battleground was the Crompton mind. The prize was the Crompton body, which lay shivering on a canvas cot, perspiration pouring from its forehead, eyes staring blankly at the light, a nerve in its forehead twitching steadily.
Crompton was the dominant personality; but he was weakened by conflict and guilt, and hampered by his own scruples. Loomis, weaker, but single-minded, certain of his own course, totally committed to the struggle, managed to hold the vital motor functions and block the flow of antidols.
For hours the two personalities were locked in combat, while the feverish Crompton body moaned and writhed on the cot. At last, in the gray hours of the morning, Loomis began to gain ground. Crompton gathered himself for a final effort, but he couldn’t bring himself to make it. The Crompton body was already dangerously overheated by the fight; a little more, and neither personality would have a corpus to inhabit.
Loomis continued to press forward, seized vital synapses, and took over all motor functions.
By sunrise, Loomis had won a total victory.
30
Shakily Loomis got to his feet. He touched the stubble on his chin, rubbed his numbed fingertips, and looked around. It was his body now. For the first time since Aaia he was seeing and feeling directly and solely instead of having all sensory information filtered and relayed to him through the Crompton personality. It felt good to breathe the stagnant air, to feel cloth against his body, to be hungry, to be alive! He had emerged from a gray shadow-world into a land of brilliant colors. Wonderful! He wanted to keep it just like this.
Poor Crompton. …
‘Don’t worry, old man,’ Loomis said. ‘You know, I’m doing this for your own good also.’
There was no answer from Crompton.
‘We’ll go back to Aaia,’ Loomis said. ‘Things will work out.’
Crompton did not, or could not, answer. Loomis became mildly alarmed.
‘Are you there Al? Are you all right?’
No answer.
Loomis frowned, then hurried outside to the commander’s tent.
‘I’ve changed my mind about finding Dan Stack,’ Loomis told the commander. ‘He really sounds too far gone.’
‘I think you’ve made a wise decision,’ the commander said.
‘So I should like to return to Aaia immediately.’
The commander nodded. ‘All spaceships leave from Yggaville, where you came in.’
‘How do I get there?’
‘Well, that’s a little difficult. I suppose I could loan you a native guide. You’ll have to trek back across the Thompson Mountains to Ou-Barkar. I suggest you to take the Desset Valley route this time, since the Kmikti Horde is migrating across the central rain forest, and you can never tell about those devils. You’ll reach Ou-Barkar in the rainy season, so the ziernies won’t be able to trek to Inyoyo. But you can join the salt caravan traveling through Knife Pass, if you catch up to them in time. If you don’t, the trail is relatively easy to follow by compass, if you compensate for the variation zones. Once you’ve reached Depotsville the monsoon will be in full career. Quite a sight, too. Perhaps you can catch a heli to New St. Denis and another to Yggaville; but I doubt it because of the zicre. Winds like that can mess up aircraft rather badly. So perhaps you’d best take the paddleboat to East Marsh, then a freighter down the Inland Zee. I believe there are several good hurricane ports along the southern shore, in case the weather
grows extreme. I personally prefer to travel by land or air. The final decision of route, of course, rests with you.’
‘Thank you,’ Loomis said.
‘Let me know what you decide,’ the commander said.
Loomis thanked him and returned to his tent in a state of nerves. He thought about the trip back across mountains and swamps, through primitive settlements, past migrating hordes. He visualized the complications added by the rains and the zicre. Never had his freewheeling imagination performed any better than it did now, conjuring up the horrors of that trip back.
It had been hard getting here; it would be much harder returning. And this time, his sensitive and aesthetic soul would not be sheltered by the patient, long-suffering Crompton. He would have to bear the full sensory impact of wind, rain, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and fear. He would have to eat the coarse foods and drink the foul water. And he would have to perform the complicated routines of the trail, which Crompton had painfully learned and which he had ignored.
The total responsibility would be his. He would have to choose the route and make the critical decisions, for Crompton’s life and for his own.
But could he? He was a man of the cities, a creature of society. His life problems had been the quirks and twists of people, not the moods and passions of nature. He had avoided the raw and lumpy world of sun and sky, living entirely in mankind’s elaborate burrows and intricate anthills. Separated from the earth by sidewalks, doors, windows, and ceilings, he had come to doubt the strength of that gigantic grinding machine of nature about which the ancients wrote so engagingly, and which furnished such excellent conceits for poems and songs. Nature, it had seemed to Loomis, sunbathing on a placid summer day or drowsily listening to the whistle of wind against his window on a stormy night, was grossly overrated.
But now, shatteringly, he had to ride the wheels of the grindstone.
Loomis thought about it and suddenly pictured his own end. He saw the time when his energies would be exhausted, and he would be lying in some windswept pass or sitting with bowed head in the driving rain of the marshlands. He would try to go on, searching for the strength that is said to lie beyond exhaustion. And he would not find it. A sense of utter futility would pass over him, alone and lost in the immensity of all outdoors. At that point life would seem too much effort, too much strain. He, like many before him, would then admit defeat, give up, lie down, and wait for death. …
Loomis whispered, ‘Crompton?’
No answer.
‘Crompton! Can you hear me? I’ll put you back in command. Just get us out of this overgrown greenhouse. Get us back to Earth or Aaia! Crompton, I don’t want to die!’
Still no answer.
‘All right, Crompton,’ Loomis said in a husky whisper. ‘You win. Take over! Do anything you want. I surrender, it’s all yours. Just please, take over!’
‘Thank you,’ Crompton said icily, and took over control of the Crompton body.
In ten minutes he was back in the commander’s tent, saying that he had changed his mind again. The commander nodded wearily, deciding that he would never understand people.
Soon Crompton was seated in the center of a large dugout canoe, with trade goods piled up around him. The paddlers set up a lusty chant and pushed onto the river. Crompton turned and watched until the Vigilantes’ tents were lost around a bend in the river.
31
To Crompton that trip down the Blood River was like a passage to the beginning of time. The six natives dipped their paddles in silent unison, and the canoe glided like a water spider over the broad, slow-moving stream. Gigantic ferns hung over the river’s bank, and quivered when the canoe came near, and stretched longingly toward them on long stalks. Then the paddlers would raise the warning shout and the canoe would be steered back to midstream, and the ferns would droop again in the midday heat. They came to places where the trees had interlaced overhead, forming a dark, leafy tunnel. Then Crompton and the paddlers would crouch under the canvas of the tents, letting the boat drift through on the current, hearing the soft splatter of corrosive sap dropping around them. They would emerge again to the glaring white sky, and the natives would man their paddles.
‘Ominous,’ Loomis said nervously.
‘Yes, quite ominous,’ Crompton agreed, growing overawed by his surroundings.
The Blood River carried them deep into the interior of the continent. At night, moored to a midstream boulder, they could hear the war-hums of hostile Yggans. One day, four canoes of Yggans pulled into the stream behind them. Crompton’s men leaned into their paddles and the canoe sprinted forward. The hostiles clung doggedly to them, and Crompton took out his rifle and waited. But his paddlers, inspired by fear, increased their lead, and soon the raiders were lost behind a bend of the river.
They breathed more easily after that. But at a narrow bend they were greeted by a shower of arrows from both banks. One of the paddlers slumped across the gunwale, pierced four times. The rest leaned to their paddles, and soon were out of range.
They dropped the dead paddler overboard, and the hungry creatures of the river squabbled over his disposition. After that a great armored creature with crablike arms swam behind the canoe, his round head raised above the water, waiting doggedly for more food. Even rifle bullets wouldn’t drive him away, and his presence gave Crompton nightmares.
The creature received another meal when two paddlers died of a grayish mold that crept up their paddles. The crablike creature accepted them and waited for more. He was a nuisance, but he protected his own: a raiding party of hostiles, seeing him, raised a great shout and fled back into the jungle. He clung behind them for the final hundred miles of the journey. And, when they came at last to a moss-covered wharf on the riverbank, he watched for a while, and then turned back upstream.
The paddlers pulled to the ruined dock. Crompton climbed onto it and saw a piece of wood daubed with red paint. Turning it over he saw written on it blood delta. population 92.
Nothing but jungle lay beyond. They had reached Dan Stack’s final retreat.
32
A narrow, overgrowth path led from the wharf to a clearing in the jungle. Within the clearing was what looked like a ghost town. Not a person walked on its single dusty street, and no faces peered out of the low, unpainted buildings. The little town baked silently under the white noonday glare, and Crompton could hear no sound but the scuffle of his own footsteps in the dirt.
‘I don’t like this,’ Loomis said.
Crompton walked slowly down the street. He passed a row of storage sheds with their owner’s names crudely printed across them. He passed an empty saloon, its door hanging by one hinge, its mosquito-netting windows ripped. He went past three deserted stores, and came to a fourth which had a sign reading stack & finch. supplies.
Crompton entered. Trade goods were in neat piles on the floor, and more goods hung from the ceiling rafters. There was no one inside.
‘Anyone here?’ Crompton called. He got no answer, and went back to the street.
At the end of the town he came to a sturdy, barnlike building. Sitting on a stool in front of it was a tanned and moustached man of perhaps fifty. He had a revolver thrust into his belt. His stool was tilted back against the wall, and he appeared to be half asleep.
‘Dan Stack?’ Crompton asked.
‘Inside,’ the man said.
Crompton walked to the door. The moustached man stirred, and the revolver was suddenly in his hand.
‘Move back away from that door,’ he said.
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’ the moustached man asked.
‘No! Who are you?’
‘I’m Ed Tyler, peace officer appointed by the citizens of Blood Delta and confirmed in office by the commander of the Vigilantes. Stack’s in jail. This here place is the jail, for the time being.’
‘How long is he in for?’
‘Just a couple of hours.’
‘Can I speak to him?’
‘Nope.’
‘Can I speak to him when he gets out?’
‘Sure,’ Tyler said, ‘but I doubt he’ll answer you.’
‘Why?’
The peace officer grinned wryly. ‘Stack will be in jail only a couple of hours on account of this afternoon we’re taking him out of the jail and hanging him by the neck until he’s dead. After we’ve performed that little chore you’re welcome to all the talking you want with him. But like I said, I doubt he’ll answer you.’
Crompton was too tired to feel much shock. He asked, ‘What did Stack do?’
‘Murder.’
‘A native?’
‘Hell, no,’ Tyler said in disgust. ‘Who gives a damn about natives? Stack killed a man name of Barton Finch. His own partner. Finch isn’t dead yet, but he’s going fast. Old Doc says he won’t last out the day, and that makes it murder. Stack was tried by a jury of his peers and found guilty of killing Barton Finch, as well as breaking Billy Redburn’s leg, busting two of Eli Talbot’s ribs, wrecking Moriarty’s Saloon, and generally disturbing the peace. The judge – that’s me – prescribed hanging by the neck as soon as possible. That means this afternoon, when the boys are back from working on the new dam.’
‘When did the trial take place?’ Crompton asked.
‘This morning.’
‘And the murder?’
‘About three hours before the trial.’
‘Quick work,’ Crompton said.
‘We don’t waste no time here in Blood Delta,’ Tyler said proudly.
‘I guess you don’t,’ Crompton said. ‘You even hang a man before his victim’s dead.’
Crompton Divided Page 12