“You know nothing,” said the voice. “But you will. You will.”
The Girl slammed the door and stood in the dim vestibule between carriages. What was going on?
And the voice continued. “We can never show you what it’s like to be rejected as unclean, as we were. But we can show you fear, and pain. A person ought to learn those things, before she dies …”
The voice was soft and the hands were obscenely gentle, too, stroking and prodding her body as if it were meat.
“Go away!”
“This is the best way … slowly. Pain is so much worse when the fear precedes it. I’m going to hurt you soon. I’m going to hurt you a little at first, then more, and more … Until your mind snaps inside that pretty head of yours. Until you go mad. You will soon look forward to going mad, my pretty fat baby.”
The door crashed open and Blondie Tranter ran through, beating with her hands about her head as though to drive off invisible birds. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” She slid to the floor and rolled over and died with the horror frozen in her eyes.
“Too fast,” said the voice.
“Where are you? Manuel! Help me, Manuel!” She still couldn’t see the Bale Wolf who held her — but through the open vestibule door she now saw a score of darting, tearing beasts in the carriage, flitting among the passengers, flickering into being, slashing, flickering out. They were merciless. They had no pity. There were the Bale Wolves.
“Now …” said the voice.
Before she died, she saw Manuel toppling, and the thing on his back was eating him as he fell …
*
“She’s going to blow!”
The diabolical creature hopped toward the Girl, scratching at its flank and chattering wordlessly. She slipped into the aisle and pushed past Bambi, who murmured, “It’ll all turn out right in the end,” while the blood poured from her brown shoulders.
The Bale Wolf dodged after the Girl. Pandemonium broke out among the passengers. She made for the Locomotive, backing, watching the creature that flitted from place to place with incredible rapidity. Silver’s crutch clattered past her and she grabbed it, and held it before her. The Bale Wolf jumped, an agile leap that took it to the ceiling and back.
She swung the crutch at where its knees had been. Then she ran for the door.
A tall, black-cowled figure barred her way. “There’s no way out here,” he said.
The Bale Wolf was upon her, salivating. Drool trickled down the hair of its jaws as it seized her arm.
Then suddenly it was gone.
AFTHERMATH
The roar was like a thousand volcanoes. The Girl was apart from it all, detached, floating in Space and watching it all happen — but not a part of it. Not affected. Manuel, Zozula and Mentor were there, too she sensed that.
Flames and smoke swept through the vestibule and into the carriage. The Girl saw something that she was to carry with her for the rest of her life, etched into her memory — an image of death. The fireman, standing in the full blast from the Locomotive, raised his arms so that his cloak hung from them like condor’s wings, and he stood there while the flames boomed past him — and the cloak did not burn; it didn’t even flutter.
The fiery breath affected the other passengers, however. Belief faded.
The Bale Wolves disappeared.
The carriage began to dissolve. The Train was breaking up. The passengers were still there, screaming as they tumbled in the blast of the furnace, but the Train was evaporating and leaving its cargo stranded in the Greataway.
The Girl, still detached, found time to wonder how the Rainbow was handling all this. Sir Charles fell past her with flailing arms. The others were falling, too, receding into the blackness of Space, which opened up all around and consumed the false fabric of the Train. Only Silver was still there, standing beside the fireman. The blast had left him untouched, too.
But he was fading. He looked at himself, then clutched his arm. A growing horror showed on his broad face. “By the Powers … !” And then his voice was gone, and his hat, and his sea-cloak. Now he was a shadow, and the steam was blowing through him as he struggled with the final, unbelievable irony.
Long John Silver was only a composite smallwish.
That threatening figure, which had dominated the Skytrain for all its existence, was no more real than the phantom Train itself. He wept as he faded. He cursed, he invoked gods and devils from all of human history — to no avail. He was gone, and only the fireman was left, gaunt and eternal. The mists faded, and the Locomotive took its place in the legends of Mankind, in the Song of Earth.
“I’ll see you again,” called the fireman — only the second time the Girl had heard him speak, and again it sent a sick shiver through her.
Manuel was there, and Zozula and Mentor. Together they and the Girl hung in limbo while the Rainbow adjusted and the Greataway adjusted, and finally, on balance, they found themselves back on Earth.
“Silver wasn’t real,” said Manuel.
“He should have known,” said Zozula.
“The Bale Wolves …” said Manuel. “I fought eight of them, one after another. I died every time. They weren’t human. What … what were they?”
They sat on a grassy hillside at sunset, and the ocean glittered crimson below them. “They are man’s most ancient fear,” said Zozula. “They’re the werewolves, I think. They’ve existed in legend as long as memory, and it seems they exist in fact as well, ever since they were created on the People Planet. They’re not Dream creatures in any sense of the word. They’re real, and they’re out there.” He looked up at the night sky and the stars and he shivered. “Up there on the Nameless Planet, with all the powers of evil.”
“We can’t fight them,” said Mentor. He lay face down, embracing the earth.
“We must,” said Manuel.
“You don’t have to, Manuel,” said the Girl. “I’ll be all right.”
“We’re not just thinking of you, Girl,” said Zozula severely. “We have Domesful of neotenites depending on us.”
“I know.” But she also knew what Manuel had meant, and now she took his hand.
Mentor suddenly sprang to his feet and his tear-wet face shone crimson in the sunset. “You people can do what you like,” he cried, “but I’m not setting foot on that Train again! Never, as long as I live.” He clutched Zozula in an extravagant gesture. “Take me back to the People Planet! I was wrong to leave. I want to go back to Selena!”
“You coward!” shouted Zozula in great embarrassment, pushing him away so violently that he fell on his back. “You’ve been quick enough to complain about Selena during the past few days. Why should she want you back up there?”
“She loves me,” said Mentor.
“What?” Zozula’s embarrassment changed to rage. “You have the gall to accuse a Cuidador of loving you, a vat-clone?”
“She does. She said she does.”
“Liar!” Zozula launched a kick at Mentor’s ribs but Mentor rolled quickly aside and Zozula, too, fell on his back. Almost insane with fury, he scrambled over to Mentor and seized him by the throat. They began to roll down the hillside, grappling and screeching.
Manuel said awkwardly to the Girl, “I don’t like this. It’s undignified. Zozula should know better.”
The Girl expelled her tension in a little shout of laughter. “They’re worse than Bale Wolves.” She watched as Zozula climbed to his feet, dragging his clone-son after him, and began to climb the hillside toward them.
“How did we escape from the Train, Girl?” asked Manuel. “I’m sure everyone else got Total Death.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was the Outer Think, as Zozula said. Perhaps I … and maybe you … oh, I don’t know. The main thing is, we’re here.”
“But we have to try again.”
Zozula arrived panting, pulling Mentor by the scruff of his neck. “And this yellow-bellied son of a caiman is coming with us,” he said, “just as soon as we’ve thought of a way to beat those Wo
lves.”
*
How did they escape from the Train? Some later historians gave credit to the Girl’s mynde, assisted by Manuel — which implied the definite existence of romantic love between the young couple. Others give little credence to this, pointing out the theoretical impossibility of a Wild Human forming such an attachment for a neotenite, and put forward the idea that the escape was due to the direct intervention of Starquin.
The minstrels chose the former viewpoint of course:
The Wolves devoured the passengers, the Train was blown apart.
But Manuel and Elizabeth conjoined with mynde and heart.
RETURN TO DREAM EARTH
Selena had been summoned from the People Planet and Caradoc from Dream Earth, and the council of war was being held in the Rainbow Room.
“We were beaten,” said Zozula, having described their encounter with the Bale Wolves. “The brutes were too good for us. They were always one move ahead. How can you capture a creature that can anticipate everything you do? There was a big-game hunter on the Train, and I’ll swear I saw one Wolf jump out of the way of the bullets before the hunter even pulled the trigger.”
“We’ve done all we can,” said Mentor. “Nobody could have done more.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Zozula quickly. “We have to come up with a new approach. A frontal attack will never defeat a Bale Wolf. We know that now.”
Mentor said, “We can’t even reach the Bale Wolves now. The Train blew up. That’s the end of it.”
The huge image of Caradoc spoke. “The Train’s still there. It will always be there. And it will always blow up. It exists on infinite parallel happentracks, so no matter how many times it is destroyed, it will still always exist.”
Selena said, after an unhappy scrutiny of Mentor, “We don’t have much time. Another four neotenites have died. They weren’t diseased in any way; they just stopped living, like the others.”
“Well, I don’t know what we can do,” snapped Zozula, irritated at the way problems were piling up. “Don’t you have any suggestions, Caradoc? You have all the resources of the Rainbow at your disposal.”
“Only a warning. If you decide to ride the Skytrain again, be very careful how far you go. I’ve been researching the past, and I’ve found traces of a malignant power out there — the old people used to call them Hate Bombs. I don’t know what the effect of these Bombs is, or even how they work. But it seems they’re powerful enough to prevent several hundred Earth colonies from getting through to us.”
“Earth colonies …” murmured Zozula. “I’d wondered about that. I assumed they never contacted us because they’d lost the power of the Outer Think.”
“No. They can’t pass the Hate Bombs. You have an empire out there, Zozula, if you could only reach it.”
“True Humans …” said Selena.
“The majority of humans out there will have adapted to their own worlds,” Caradoc pointed out. “If you saw them, you’d probably think they were Wild Humans. It only needs a small change in environment to change a human.”
Manuel laughed, earning a sharp look from Zozula.
“If we could remove the Hate Bombs, we could make contact,” said Selena.
“After we capture our Bale Wolf,” said Manuel.
But Zozula had been thinking. “Not so fast. Let’s consider this carefully. Let’s be perfectly sure we want to let these people in, before we start making plans.”
“Of course we want them in,” Manuel said. “Why not? Just think of what they could teach us … The different worlds they’ve seen. The Greataway. The aliens.” His eyes were shining, his expression faraway. “Just think how good it would be for Earth, and for the Wild Humans. We could relearn all the things we’ve forgotten. We could learn how to operate all our machines. We could even learn how to build them. All those questions we’re asking ourselves about the things we see around us — those people will have the answers. It’ll be the start of a new age!”
Selena was watching Zozula. “An age that will have no need of Cuidadors,” she murmured.
There was a sudden silence.
When Zozula spoke, he sounded far too abrupt. “Anyway, it’s all academic. If Caradoc doesn’t know how to tackle the Bale Wolves, that means the Rainbow doesn’t know. And if the Rainbow doesn’t know, nobody does.”
The Girl spoke for the first time. “Somebody might.”
“Who?”
She flushed. “Well, I don’t mean somebody might know more than the Rainbow. I mean … I mean it depends on what question you ask, and how you ask it. And who you ask.”
“I know what you mean,” said Caradoc. “I can ask the Rainbow questions about human history and get straight answers. But if I ask a Dream Person the same question, I can’t always understand what he tells me. Dream People exist on a different plane from me, with a different reality. There’s a whole dimension of facts that they alone have access to.” He smiled at Eloise. “Eloise exists in my mind as a smallwish, yet I don’t know what she’s thinking. And I know she does think.”
“Of course I think,” said Eloise. “And I think you try too hard, Caradoc.” She grinned at him mischievously.
“Or did I smallwish her to say that?” asked Caradoc. “In the end, there are some things I’d rather not ask about.”
The Girl said, “I must go back into Dream Earth, Zozula. I’ll be able to find some of the answers that are beyond Caradoc’s reach.”
*
The pain was gone. After weeks of sore feet, aching chest, breathlessness, nausea, incontinence and headaches, the Girl felt good again. She ran her hands over her body and found it slim. She bent down and touched her toes. The sun was warm and music came from a nearby inn. She jumped, and her calves and thighs felt strong, and she stayed off the ground for a long time. She laughed and jumped again for the sheer joy and freedom of it, and when she landed she felt her breasts jiggle firmly, and it was very healthy and feminine to have them back. It had rained recently and the earth smelled good, and she smelled good, and she ran to a puddle to get a look at herself.
A beautiful creature looked up at her from the water.
Her hair was short and thick and richly dark where it had been thin, straggly and mousy. Her eyes were warm brown and her face was round without being plump. It was a cute face, a mischievous, gamine face. Delighted, she skipped across the country lane and touched the trees and smelled their resin. It was all so real, not the least bit phoney, as she’d remembered it. Her body was tingling with some obscure need, and after a while she identified it: Just another of those good things that go with a good body — she wanted to make love.
It was a pity Manuel wasn’t here.
But there were plenty of people at the inn. She heard laughter above the music. People were having a good time in there. Upstairs were bedrooms with brightly flowered curtains, and there would be soft beds with crisp white sheets.
Dream Earth was fun.
Manuel should share this with her. Or if not actually Manuel, then someone very much like him. Someone so much like him that she’d never know the difference.
“I wish …”
And she stopped herself. Some residue of purpose stayed with her, and the smallwish remained unuttered. It would only have been that: just a smallwish, like Eloise. And she had plenty of psy, loads of it. Really, just one smallwish wouldn’t have made too much difference, would it?
“Oh, hell,” she said aloud. Then she ran into the inn before she could change her mind.
Everybody looked familiar. That was one of the good things about Dream Earth — it was like meeting old friends again. Marilyn was there, and Burt and John and Captain Sylvia. They talked about the same things in the same idiom. It was as though she’d never been away. As usual, there was the sprinkling of strangers to make things interesting. At a table in the corner a group of Pirates sat, plotting in low tones. And there were a number of swarthy folk; something in the cast of their faces reminded her of Man
uel. Obviously, a new fashion had come into favor in her absence. A giant anteater wandered among the tables, thick tail waving, slender snout prodding at morsels on the floor. She guessed that some influence from the real world had touched Dream Earth: There were reminders of Pu’este here — or maybe she’d never noticed them before.
“I’m going Latin just as soon as I have the psy,” a blonde Sandra said, confirming the Girl’s impressions.
There was a place at the Sandra’s table and the Girl sat there. They looked at her in some surprise — a Mog, a Raccoona and a Pan, as well as the Sandra, who asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Myself, I think,” said the Girl.
“You haven’t done too badly.” The Pan watched her admiringly with his faun eyes.
The Girl said, “I have to get to the Oracle.”
“Then use some psy, darling.”
“I don’t want to. I may need all I have.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to smallwish you there.” The Sandra was now regarding the Girl with active dislike.
“I just thought … Maybe you knew somebody who’d consulted the Oracle recently, and you could give me directions …”
They roared with laughter. “Who in hell wants to consult the Oracle?” shouted the Mog, in between gulps of beer. “Who in hell cares?”
The Raccoona said quietly, “Only intellectual freaks consult the Oracle, darling. Do we look like intellectual freaks?”
And it was happening again, that thing that happened all too often on Dream Earth, the thing that had in the past caused the Girl to be Herself, to try to escape from the endless round of pleasure. Things closed in. The table seemed smaller and the laughter louder, and Pan’s face looked so close it was distorted, a huge beak of a nose almost obscuring the slanting eyes. Sandra’s hair blotted out the room, and Raccoona’s hands lay on the table like bear paws. The dream was turning into a nightmare.
The Girl stood.
Pan said, “Hey, stay!”
She blinked to try to rid her eyes of them, remembered she could smallwish herself away, whirled around and ran out of the door.
Gods of the Greataway Page 21