Nancy, stepping up beside, poked him with her elbow — the first time in a while that she'd touched him. "And what cost is that?"
".. . Beside her always-hunger, I don't know."
"If you knew how old she was in WT years," Richard said, trudging in the lead, "— you'd know the cost."
"Fifty years?.. . More?"
"Thirty-nine," Nancy said, and stepped out so Baj had to trot to catch up.
"Is that true?"
"Yes. And how old do you think I am?"
Baj remembered wise men's lessons. "Young," he said.
... They worked their way by star-light, more than the slender crescent moon's, across the Map I-Seventy — the pass certainly much wider than it had been in Warm-times — and, though easier than mountainsides, still difficult traveling over one-after-another low ridge or shelf of mud and flood-trash rafted down, with only coarse grass growing.
They marched hungry, and cold in a north wind — the short-summer seeming left behind on their last mountain to the south. Baj pictured some beast roasting over a hidden fire's careful coals, once they were in the new northern hills.
He managed to imagine the taste of the wild meat fairly well as he marched along. Hot, oily, rank, and wonderful.
Mud and gravel gritted under their moccasin-boots. The stars — brilliant now as sunlit powder snow — shone not quite enough for shadows. Baj heard Errol strolling out to the left, watched Nancy's bobbing pack just before him — then almost walked into her as she suddenly stopped. Richard, bulk barely seen, stood still in front of her.
"What is it?" Baj climbed a low shelf of grassy drift... came up beside him.
There was a shallow run-off creek lying across their way, frosted by star-light.
"How deep?" Baj said — then saw the creek was no creek at all, but a narrow roadway running east and west, straight as a taut rope, its crushed limestone-gravel shining white.
"The Warm-time road?"
"The WT pathway," Richard said, keeping his voice low, "— if it was here — lies buried deep."
"Yes... of course." Baj stepped down to the road, knelt and touched the surface. "Fine-broken, tamped hard, and ditched. This is a Kingdom road, a best road — but our people never came so far!"
"Best," Richard said, "— but new, and no Kingdom road. We traveled our way south to the west of here, and saw nothing like it."
And as if his words had called a demon-Great, the softest chuff chuff chuff sounded on the wind, as though a giant's boots were scuffing down the pass.
They stood still, listening, as the sound, steady as the beat of blood, first faded as the wind swung away... then grew louder.
Light — a dazzle of yellow light flashed suddenly from the west down the limestone road — and as they stood watching, grew brighter while the giant boots seemed to scuff and kick their way along.
"An engine of machinery." Baj's heart was thumping, thumping. "It's a Warm-time engine, pushed by cramped steam!"
"No," Richard said, "— it isn't."
"Back!" Nancy clutched their packs, yanked them so hard that Baj stumbled. "Back...!"
They retreated over mud and flood-trash.
"Down," Richard said. "Lie down."
"Errol." Nancy called softly as she could. "Errol... !"
Now the yellow light and chuff chuff chuffing had come nearly to them, was just down the moonlit limestone way — and looking over the mud shelf, Baj saw Errol suddenly come into the glare like a moth due for dying — come onto the limestone road and go dancing down it, glowing gold as the boot-sound, stomp and scuff, grew loud as right-beside, with the rolling grind of big wheels turning.
"Errol!" Nancy was up and would have run to him, but Baj caught her ankle, tripped her, and wrestled to hold her down. He put his hand over her mouth, and was bitten — then Richard was beside him, and together they held her still.
"Shhh..." Baj whispered in her ear. "Shhh, sweetheart." The second time he'd said that foolish thing.
An easy stone's-toss away, Errol stood still, blinking into blazing yellow. There was sudden silence on the limestone road — no heavy rhythmic noises, no motion. Glancing to the left, Baj saw behind the light's shimmering halo, a shape huge as forty Richards.
Time seemed to beat and pulse with the yellow right — from a great mirrored lamp, certainly. Errol stood staring, mouth open, apparently amazed.
Then, barely, by what the lamp allowed of star-light, Baj saw silhouettes of many men — certainly men — climbing down from the big thing. One of them called out, "Do you question?"
Errol stood staring into the light, and Baj saw a weasel's silver circles of reflection in his eyes.
"Do you question?"
Richard said, as if to himself, "Jesus-the-Christ," then heaved to his feet and called, "He doesn't question — doesn't speak!"
Silence. Then the man said, "Come out. And explain why you were hiding from Manifestation."
Richard muttered, "Be careful," as Baj and Nancy stood to join him. "... and ask no questions."
"The burning..." Nancy whispered, and once she had, Baj smelled — from the huge thing on the road, the men standing by it — the faintest drift, almost a smoky memory of fire.
Baj considered for an instant taking Nancy and fading back into the dark — then thought of Richard left alone with those people, and decided not. Doubted Nancy would go, in any case. His hand hurt; she'd bitten deep into the meat of his thumb... second time biting him...
He stood and followed Richard over the mud shelf, then stepped down, Nancy right behind, into golden light where a man stood in almost silhouette, other men in the darkness behind him. He held a long, dark, heavy stick — part wood, perhaps part iron.
"Why," the man said, "— do Persons and a human appear to travel the Demonstration Road?"
Baj saw the man's white beard as he spoke. An old man, holding a weighty, polished stick.
"We didn't know it was your road," Baj said. "We intend only to cross it... and mean no harm."
"To appear to cross it, is to appear to travel it," the old man said, "— and damage the demonstration."
"Then," Nancy said, "— we'll go around." One of the men behind the lamp's dazzle laughed.
"But this boy —" the old man pointed with his heavy stick, "— this... what is he, a sort of Person ? He already appears to stand on it."
"An offense may be put right," Richard said.
"It's best put right, apparent Made-man, by ripping up our road and paving again — at least where he seems to stand. And where you three seem to stand."
"I wish," Richard said, "— we had time enough to help do that."
Several of the lamp-shadowed men laughed. "Your help would not be acceptable," the old man said, and turned fully into the light to murmur something to a man behind him.
"Floating Jesus..." Baj had said it before he'd thought. The old man was wearing dark long-leg cloth trousers and a buttoned dark jacket to match. His shirt was white cloth, with a turned-down collar — and under it, a narrow red neckerchief was knotted, that hung below his beard. His shoes were laced low, and made of black, waxed leather.... He might have been a copybook sketch from Warm-times, torn from an ancient page to walk and talk again.
The old man stared at Baj. "Do you have a question, apparent boy?"
"I'm no boy," Baj said — then remembered Richard's murmur: "No questions." "And I have no questions."
The old man stared at him a few moments more, then said, "All of you will seem to come and follow us for discussion — but not appearing to walk on our road."
"And if we prefer to go on our way?" Nancy gripped Errol's arm to hold him still.
"That rudeness," the old man said, "— so close to real, would call for actual demonstrations by Winchesters, Springfields, and Remingtons."
Baj supposed those named were the families of the men with him. Fighting men, apparently, and with kinsmen to back them in trouble.... The odor of burning was in the night air with the Shadow-men
. Their huge road-traveler shifted behind them, gravel ground beneath it.
"Seem to follow," the old man said. "But walk to the side of our road. To touch it again, would be the same as a question." He walked back out of the lamp's harsh yellow light, the others with him, and Baj saw their dark shapes climbing up onto the big thing, which, after no apparent signal, began again that stomping shuffle, chuff... chuff... and moved, its great wheels crunching over gravel, east down the Pass I-Seventy.
... By star-light and lamp-light, Richard led carefully alongside the roadway, walking fast to keep up with the thing and its burden of men. Nancy kept a grip on Errol's arm.
Baj trotted up beside Richard, murmured, "Why no questions?"
"Perfect belief admits no questions."
"Ah... And if we fight these people, then run?"
"We could kill some . .. but there are more than 'some' riding their thing. Those sticks are not sticks."
"Then what? Are they the WT guns?"
"Shhh... They are pretend-those-guns, made to look as the copybooks show them."
"Then what keeps us here?"
"The Guard knows those sticks. They have rows of little steel springs inside them that look like leaves. A notched steel rod is forced down into the stick, that catches those springs and bends them against their will."
Baj found it difficult to keep close with Richard's long striding. "... I see. Then whatever grips the rod, if that's released and the springs spring straight —"
"Yes. Then the rod flies out — and will nail a Person to a tree if it strikes him."
"That's a serious weapon."
"Serious, yes — but slow to make work again, and without an arrow's range, or a slung stone's, either. .. . Their spring-sticks aren't the reason the Guard doesn't come this way."
"Then why?"
"Because," Richard said, even more softly, "— madness may be caught, as the pox is caught."
Baj thought of asking more, then decided not to, and dropped back to more comfortable walking.
Nancy poked him, and whispered, "What were you saying?"
"Saying there is no fighting, then running. The sticks are spring-shooters, and dangerous."
"I knew that," Nancy said, not troubling to whisper. "Everyone knows that."
Someone called to them from the road-traveling thing — a different voice from the old man's. "Is there a question?"
"No," Baj called back, "— there is no question. And we are not touching your road."
... But there began to be a question as the night wore on, and the road-thing's big wheels turned and turned down the gravel way behind the flare of its yellow lamp. The roadside was graded even, its dirt covered only with rough grasses, but even a level can weary after several dark glass-hours — and tire travelers more, when they are traveling captive. Baj heard Nancy trip and stumble once... then, later, again — something she'd rarely done where there was freedom, and unevenness for her bounding pace.
"Give the boy to me." Baj turned, caught Errol by his shirtsleeve, then stepped aside and stopped to let Nancy by. "Go on..."
It seemed that surely the men riding their road-thing would grow tired of riding, but they never did, so it breathed its hoarse boot-step breaths, and its wheels rolled on through hour after hour, until all seemed to Baj — tugging the silent boy along — only a dream as his moccasins marched the night away... until at last they brought him into the first of dawn's gray light.
Then, leaving Errol with Nancy, and trotting up past Richard — who made a face and gestured him back — Baj began to see the traveling thing clearly, its lamp's glow fading. It was a huge box — high, wide, and very long — painted the red of rust, and rolling on iron wheels, front and back. Baltimore & Ohio was printed along its side in black.
Thirty men sat in three rows, riding the top of it — all dressed in Warm-time ways out of copybooks: jacket-suits and white shirts with colored cloth strips tied under the collars. They all held spring-sticks upright beside them. And none turned their heads to look down at him.
... There was a chimney at the front, a black smokestack like those that Ordinary merchants built into their houses on the River. But this was made of painted wood planking, like the rest of the rolling box — and the big light (a cluster of oil-lamps and polished mirrors) was fastened below it.
Though rolling on no iron rails, and perhaps otherwise odd, this was so nearly the chugging "locomotive" copybooks sketched — and now come back after six hundred years — that tears flooded Baj's eyes, and he slowed to wait for the others, touched Nancy's shoulder. "Look... Look!"
She turned in brightening morning, her narrow face very human with fatigue. "I see it, Baj," she said, and didn't whisper. "I see it, and the faces of the Sunriser-humans riding it — and still smell burning from them."
"Yes. I suppose... they destroyed that village."
"There are no children with them. Those must have been sent back with others, and another way."
Baj could smell that faint odor of charring drifted with the red recalled-locomotive. The men riding, sat in their rows along its roof, their faces still as if they slept, though their eyes were open.... The old man, beard breezing with their slow steady passage of stomp-chuffing, sat up front behind the chimney-stack, and occasionally tapped one side or the other of the box's roof with the butt of his spring-stick.
With a real — not recalled — locomotive, there would have been weary, relaxed steam coming from somewhere, and smoke from making a boiling heat would be puffing from the chimney-stack. Here, there was neither — only chuff-chuffing.
"What pushes it? — perhaps some great spring-engine mechanical, since these people do metal springs."
"Baj," Nancy said, "are all princes fools?" An exhausted girl. He saw how she would look when old — the part-fox queen of a different country.
"What...?"
"Bend down. Bend down and look!"
"Be quiet," Richard said, beside them.
Baj bent... had to bend lower as he walked along, and was just able to see, deep under the locomotive's rust-red edge — and behind one of the great turning wheels — ranks of heavy boots stepping all together. Pairs and pairs and pairs of boots — thirty... perhaps as many as forty men working there beneath it, driving the thing along, toes digging in for purchase. Tired men, now. Baj could see some were a little out of step, their stomping almost stumbling.
The sadness of it was surprising — though it shouldn't have been. Had he really thought even remotely possible a true locomotive, with an engine real and panting or unwinding with great power? Who, after all, even in Middle Kingdom, had come close to the tolerances and thousand perfections of the copybooks' engines of cramped steam?. .. Like a child, he'd imagined that so-unlikely thing out of longing, a half-formed wish for the return of an ancient miracle.
Nancy glanced at him. "I'm sorry," she said, an unusual gentleness.
Shortly after, at sunrise — as they trudged past wide fields of carrot, cauliflower, and potato, the rows planted between shielding beds of straw — Errol fell down sound asleep, and wouldn't rouse. Baj had to pick the boy up and carry him — surprisingly light in his arms.
Straight down the narrow road — its crushed limestone brilliant white — the copy-locomotive rolled slowly through a stand of tamaracks shading many long wooden sheds, its hidden booted engines stumbling, exhausted.
"Listen." Nancy cocked her head.
Listening, Baj thought for a moment he heard the River's gulls calling along its shores. Then realized it was children. Children were crying out from the long sheds, calling for mothers... fathers, burned and dead.
"Say nothing," he said to Nancy. "Say nothing..."
The pretend locomotive rolled slowly, slowly on... and on into a place past pretending, a dream to live in. It was a small town of six hundred years before.
The gravel road became a sunny street with scythed green-grass lawns, trimmed evergreen hedges, and rows of perfect little wood houses, painted w
hite, yellow, and pale blue with marvelous pigments — pressed from plants, Baj supposed, or ground from minerals dug in the mountains. Some of these must-be-cottages were shaded by tall paper-birches, tamarack, or black spruce, and each was decorated with neat borders of trimmed fireweed, goldenrod, and what Baj thought might be columbine — wall-weather plants, this far north, even in the short summer.
Women, some with their hair cut close as their lawns, knelt tending the plants in cloth dresses or very short trousers that showed their bare legs despite a chill morning. Only a few looked up to see the pretend-locomotive roll past, though children dressed in blue-dyed cloth trousers and colored shirts trotted along beside it, waving to the men riding. Baj saw no dogs . .. no strutting chicken-birds.
No one stared at him and the Persons — not even the children — as if he, Nancy, Richard, and Errol were only ghosts of an improbable future, not present in this time at all.
There were wide gravel walkways or drives alongside each small house, and placed on every one was a much smaller box than the false-locomotive — though also of painted wood.
"What are those?" Baj asked the air as he labored along. Errol, sleeping in his arms, had grown heavier.
One of the men riding, leaned down and called, "A question?"
"No question," Richard called back, "— only admiration."
That man, and others, stared down for a moment... then seemed satisfied.
These smaller boxes, in many painted colors — and one by every little house — were shaped resting on four fat wooden disks, painted black. Each box on each graveled walk had little square windows cut out of it.... The nearest, as they passed, showed curving letters along its side, painted tar-black. BUICK.
"Pretend driving-cars," Baj said.
Richard, walking ahead, stopped and waited to take Errol from him. "Careful," he murmured, "what words you use. Better not pretend."
Baj decided to be quiet, since these people — mad or not — were so grimly serious. But even in pretense, the town still lay before him as if risen not from copybook sketches and descriptions, but from the reality behind them.... The street and tree-shaded houses breathed an ancient perfect warmth, that, as if a great brass cymbal were struck, rang and vibrated from that time to this time and back again, so the laughing children, the plant-tending women in their odd immodest dress, and the silent men wearing button-jackets and trousers, shirts and throat-ties, all seemed to insist that the Age of Ice was false after all, and ancient truth lay here, beneath Lady Weather's apron.
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