by Dan Donoghue
Then he had rounded the first bend, and there, lying against the wall, was the first skeleton. There was no doubt about the origin of this one. It was human. The white skull still wore the crumbling remnants of a field hat, the long leg bones disappeared into scraps of mouldering boots, a belt lay in a tangle of pelvic, and rib bones, and supported a holstered blaster, corroded and useless. The empty eye sockets stared at the light from a hundred tragic years away, but human it had been, and its last act had been to try to pull itself along the floor. Three finger bones still stuck upright in the earth.
Wolf went on, stepping carefully around the outstretched legs. One thing thrust through the preoccupation of keeping his shield intact. The body had not been eaten. The bones hadn't even been badly scattered. What then was the purpose of the power? What thing killed then left the body to rot? All his hunter training cried, evil.
Ten paces on was the second pattern of bones. This one had no hat or boots, but the remains of some sort of leather jacket, and a belt that carried no weapon. The next was of a family, man, woman, and child, very old, crumpled, and chained together. Wolf stood, staring down, for a moment his purpose forgotten, even the power pushed a little from his consciousness. What tragedy had this been? Had they all been sensitives? Or had only one been, and the other two tried to hold that person back? Had the father dragged his wife and child to this doom? In the end the man had been dragging the other two, the chain told that story. “God help them!” Wolf whispered from the depths of the memory of someone on the Star-bird.
Further on were more skeletons, but Wolf did not pause to look, for beyond them was movement, and slowly, as he crept forward, dark shapes took form, and he found Leeli Pa'Lar, still alive, though barely so, and guarded by two kerries. Wolf hesitated. He needed both light and weapon. He couldn't have both.
Slowly, he walked towards the animals. They backed away from the light, snarling softly, their great eyes gleaming almost blue in the white light, their tails lashing gently in the darkness beyond them. He reached Leeli. She lay on her side, staring into the darkness along the tunnel, trying to pull herself along, unresponsive to the light, no longer seeing with her eyes. Only a few wisps of material clung to her shoulders. Her body was wasted so that only dry skin seemed to cover the bones, and her mouth and tongue were swollen and black with thirst though water streamed only centimetres away.
Wolf dropped to his knees beside her, and lifted her head. Her eyes stared sightlessly, glued open with dirt. She might have been dead except her fingers still clawed, and twitched towards the thing that had destroyed her. He scooped water in his hand and trickled it across her lips and protruding tongue. She made no attempt to swallow. She gave no indication that she felt it. He doubted if she could be helped. She certainly couldn't while the power held her mind in its iron grip.
Gently he put her head back down on the ground, and stood up. The kerries crouched at the edge of the light. When he moved, they came forward a little. He would have to kill them. Whatever he was to meet up there would be bad enough without having a couple of kerries to contend with, but he couldn't kill them unless he could lure them back into the light. He took a step back. They came up, alert. He took another step. They came after him, slowly, not walking, slinking, close to the ground, their hind legs always kept well up under them, their lips pulled back over gleaming fangs. There was death in the quiver of their flanks.
Back, still back, never taking his eyes off them. If he could reach sufficient light. His eyes had become accustomed to the bright glare. That had been a mistake—his second mistake. He should have had low power—he could not now detect any other light.
His boot crunched into the bones of the family. Instinctively, he jerked aside. The kerries leapt. Wolf flung himself against the wall, swinging the lever and pulling the trigger at the same time. The light faded into the eyes of the foremost animal, and the jet of energy blasted them apart. The dead animal cannoned into its mate throwing it off stride, and forcing it past Wolf who had dived beneath the raking claws. Wolf rolled on the floor, and came up as the animal touched soil and bounded around, all in one smooth, deadly flow of motion. It was between him and the lesser darkness of the tunnel mouth, and he fired instinctively at shape and movement. The blast missed its head, and burned a great gash along its neck and shoulder. It screamed in savage agony, and its mighty leap carried it over him, and back into the greater darkness. Immediately, Wolf swung the weapon through to maximum light, and the blackness sprang away, and the beast crouched with lashing tail on the very edge of the glow.
Between them, Leeli was making little grunting noises, and Wolf could hear her fingers scrabbling weakly against the dirt, but he dare not look down. The animal was wounded, and must be killed. Slowly he advanced, ready again to swing the lever, and use the dying light to aim. The kerry was wise to its danger. Snarling, and dragging its wounded leg, it moved back with the shadows.
They rounded another bend, past skeletons dimly seen, and the floor reached a summit, and began to slope downwards. On for about seventy metres, pace by pace, eyes intent, body keyed and quivering nerves, the eyes, the dragging leg, the gleaming teeth, and the red haze of the power.
Then the kerry stopped and howled. No longer the snarl of a savage beast defiant, but a thin high wail of desperation, and terror, infinitely more terrible in that place of darkness. The hair lifted along wolf's spine, all the claustrophobic, and racial terrors of his ancestors crowded in to swamp his reason.
The animal sensed his moment of panic. It tried to spring, but there was only a confused swirl of movement, and it dropped away out of the range of the light, gone, as though the earth had swallowed it. Wolf crouched against the wall, his heart pumping furiously, his trembling fingers playing on the lever of the blaster, his eyes seeking, trying to penetrate the darkness to catch a glimpse of his foe. There was nothing—no shape, no sound, no movement, only the unrelenting night, and the bitter scent of his fear.
Still nothing moved—nothing attacked. Wolf took a cautious step forward. The light advanced. The empty tunnel went on, dipping more steeply down, but empty. On, and he was almost to where the kerry had been, and the tunnel had become very steep, and, there, at the very limit of his light, the kerry lay. It was still. It looked dead. Then it moved, but not of itself. The whole floor where the tunnel levelled off, was moving, soundlessly moving, carrying the carcass of the kerry away into the hollow darkness.
What had happened to it? What force had hurled it down and killed it? The drop could not have harmed it. The tunnel still sloped. It would be possible to walk down. Wolf examined the walls, roof, and floor. There was nothing, but a series of fresh scratches in the soil where the animal's claws had scored it. Tensely, ready to leap at the first hint of movement, Wolf crept forward.
The scratches ended abruptly. Wolf was almost at the end of them. There were things down below, but he could not give thought to them until he discovered the peril of this place. The roof, the walls, the floor—nothing. He was about to take another step, when his hunter's eye saw the faint difference in the formation of the floor where he was about to put his foot. He bent to examine it. The whole floor, just past his feet, consisted of tiny spheres set closely together. He touched them. They turned under the slightest pressure. He reached back and dug a pinch of earth from the floor behind him, and dropped it in front of him. It consisted only of a few minute grains—little larger than dust, but they trickled away, down the slope until the light was too poor to follow them. He looked further. The lower part of the walls were of the same stuff. Anything stepping onto that surface could not possibly help but slide down, as down a chute to the conveyor belt below, and, somewhere on the way, or down there, be killed.
He shone the blaster along each wall. A sinister line of little round holes ran from the centre of the bottom area up each wall, and three sets ran up the far wall. Also from the far wall projected a delicate blossom of fine wires, and glass-like dishes that seemed to shimmer, an
d catch the light, and form whorls of it. He could not doubt it was the thing he sought.
Wolf knelt, took careful aim, then once more pressed the trigger as he swung the lever to maximum power. There was a brilliant flash of white light, a sharp crack, and a long tongue of flame spurting out. Wolf staggered back, his hands over his eyes, but his mind suddenly released. For a few moments he lay on the floor in blessed relief, savouring the wonderful pleasure of relaxation, of absence of pain and struggle. His head felt light and floating, and the sensation of pleasure seemed to ripple down his body. The thing was gone. He had destroyed the thing. He felt the need to sleep strong within him, but he heard the screams, demanding screams, screams of agony such as he had never heard before.
They came from behind. Leeli—he had forgotten Leeli. He staggered up, and ran back along the passage. Leeli writhed on the floor, scream after scream was torn from her bursting throat, her eyes bulged in agony, her body convulsed again, and again, with her bone thin arms and legs jerking like the limbs of a puppet in the hands of a child.
For a little he stared down at her seeking her mind, and her hands stopped jerking and began to claw her head, ripping out the hair and tearing the skin and flesh. He saw her mind. With shaking hands, he swung the blaster back to kill, and blessing the sudden night, fired into the darkness. Then he stumbled over to the wall and leant trembling against it. He no longer wanted to sleep: he wanted to die.
At last he straightened up, and walked slowly towards the mouth of the tunnel, past the dead kerry, past the skeletons chained in a row, and into the fresh air, and, as he sucked it into his lungs, the power hit again.
In almost total disbelief, he turned and stared back into the tunnel. It just couldn't. It defied logic. He felt a great sense of injustice. Things should not defy logic. When they were destroyed they should stay destroyed.
Slowly he began that terrible walk back, past the skeleton whose empty eyes mocked him, past the kerry, white brains and black blood, past Leeli whose dead face accused him mutely, and on, slowly, fearful of what he must meet.
The thing, being a machine, he had taken as a relic of the bird people, marvellously preserved. The thing being repaired could only mean that they were still here. If so, why had there been no word of them? He stopped at the start of the scratches. There was the deadly flower, whole once more.
Again he fired, and again the thing burst into light and fire, but this time he had been expecting it, and his eyes had been tightly closed against the glare. He turned the blaster back to light. The thing hung in a tangle of smoking ends and shattered glass. His mind was free.
It took only about two minutes. The side of the tunnel broke open to form a doorway, and a shining thing with a barrel body, and a dozen arms each with a multitude of tools, chuckled its way into sight, riding on what looked like three spheres set beneath it. Wolf sought its brain. It had no mind as he knew or could detect, but it set to work, and the thing grew again under the clitter and flash of its tools. In ten minutes it turned away, and the power came on.
With a new energy pack in the blaster, Wolf burnt out the flower and the robot. Minutes passed. A second robot rolled through the door, swung round the blasted remains of its comrade, and went to the wall. It showed no interest in Wolf or the light of the blaster. Wishing he had another source of light, Wolf swung the blaster back to kill, and fired again. The robot seemed to come apart relatively easily, and added to the pile of smouldering material on the floor. Wolf waited. Sooner or later, one of the bird people must come to see what was happening to their robots.
Almost five minutes passed. Wolf was beginning to wonder if he could stay awake long enough, and the terrible thought dawned that the robots had only to wait until he slept to repair the flower, and he would follow the kerry down to his death.
Then two robots appeared. One, similar to the first two, hooked onto the remains, lifted them apparently without difficulty, and carried them back through the door. Then it returned and went to the wall and started work. The other took up station beside it. A different robot this, made of thick heavy material, and carrying an assortment of strange appendages. None of them looked like tools. All of them looked like weapons. This one might indeed be interested in Wolf.
He did not fire again. He kept very still in case movement should trigger a hostile response. While the robot still worked, Wolf gathered what seemed his last reserves of strength, and projected his mind down and through the door. A blurred vision of space and movement reached him, but he could not explore, for the robot was turning back, and he jerked his mind closed as the power surged out once more.
When the door had closed, and he was alone again, Wolf turned away in despair. His strength was done. Useless to try to travel far enough back to save himself. The only chance he had was to get into the space behind the thing, and destroy enough of it to take the robots at least a day to repair. He couldn't use the door below. The rows of holes and the dead kerry demonstrated that. He would have to find another way in, avoid the guards, and bird people, destroy the machine, and find a place to hide long enough to regain his strength.
Impossible! Better to relax, accept the ecstasy, and its death. He had done much, suffered much, he could do no more. Strange it was. The irony made him smile grimly. Generally men endured because death was pain and fear; here death was pleasure, and life was pain. Death was balm that beckoned, and drew him, life was only Margaret, and the instinct to survive.
Once more, he shot out the flower. Then, while his mind was free, he turned and went down the tunnel at a staggering trot.
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Chapter 13
Back in the open air with his mind once more under siege, and his body fast reaching the critical point of collapse, Wolf looked round at the high walls of the long V of the gap. He could no longer think clearly. Thought flickered like a dying flame in his mind. There had to be other entrances—other what?—over the hills—the hills—what of the hills?—hills so high,—high. He leant against the cliff face, and his head nodded. There was something he had to do over the hills for Margaret—Margaret, and the thing in the tunnel—the thing that wanted to get into his head—Leeli Pa'Lar—he had to find Leeli Pa'Lar—someone was dead—Leeli or Margaret—somewhere—over the hills—the hunt was up—they were waiting for him—the hills—Leeli—Margaret—hunters robots—skeletons.
He shook himself awake. The air had cooled, but the sweat stood out on his forehead as he realised how close he had come to sleeping. What to do? Find another entrance. Impossible, but he couldn't just stand there. Where would another entrance be? On the other side of the hills. He could go down the V until the hills ran down onto the plain, or he could try to climb the cliff. It was too far. He started to climb in the corner where the mouth of the tunnel met the wall. He forgot what he was doing. All his effort became concentrated in keeping his mind closed, though he no longer clearly knew why it was necessary, and climbing.
He climbed, clinging stubbornly to roughnesses of rocks or roots of trees. He climbed. As his strength ebbed, the rock became rougher, and the slope less steep, so he continued. Then he cleared the mouth of the tunnel, and the power dropped from his mind.
The change cleared his mind as would a dash of cold water. He thought again. Realisation came, and hope welled like water from a spring. It had not occurred to him that the power would be so directional, but it was suddenly obvious. Coming down the length of the tunnel it could hardly be otherwise, and the V shape—that would have told him had he been thinking properly.
Fresh hope found fresh strength, and he began to climb more vigorously, and soon he reached the natural slope of the hill, and clambered to the far side. There he risked a quick opening of his mind. He experienced only the faintest of sensations less even than he had felt back at Hi City. When he closed it again, there was no detectable pressure against it, only a sort of inner tiredness. The relief was enormous. He could sleep. The thing had with
stood him, but it had not destroyed him, either. There would be a second battle.
He thought to fall immediately asleep, but he could not despite his exhaustion. Every time he dozed, he snapped awake, with every nerve end screaming fear, and all his skin prickling. Then he fearfully tested the area with his mind. Even when he found it still clear, he could not relax. He was afraid to sleep.
In the end, he used the blaster against the dark to travel even further, over the next line of hills, and down into a steep sided gully. There he burrowed in under an overhanging rock, and, in a sort of cocoon of rock, where he could detect no sign of the power at all, he found the courage to sleep.
Day was well advanced when he woke. His mind felt wonderfully refreshed, but his stomach roared with hunger. The hills were mostly of bare rock with few patches of soil and little water. Only here and there, were there small pools collected from recent rains. All the gullies were dry. A little grass, and a few stunted trees, grew. There seemed to be no animals about. Wolf was puzzled. The country was drier than the settled area, but it was far from desert. It appeared as though rain water ran completely off without sinking into the ground at all, but there was no sign of the rapid erosion that should accompany such conditions. He could only conclude that the rock must be very hard indeed, and remarkably free of crevices.
Since he was reluctant to face the plain while the power still held sway, Wolf hunted through the hills towards the other side. From the crest of the last ridge, he viewed a remarkable sight.
A narrow, almost enclosed plain was there, beautiful beyond anything he had ever seen on Earth or High America. Watered with small streams coming in from all but the hills he trod, with a great, clear lake in the centre, greened with grasses, and trees bearing fruits. It seemed a haven, and a land of plenty. Animals moved through the grasses, or fed on the fallen fruit. They were all small in size, but there seemed a much greater variety than he had seen thus far. From the arid hills where the heat was already lifting from the rocks, it looked a paradise indeed.