by James Axler
What would be worse? To choke on the air that had become dust, or to be unable to take breath because of the rock that hardened around you so that your chest was constrained, and the space around your mouth and nostrils became filled with the hard substance, allowing no breath to be taken, or even that which remained in your lungs to be expelled, so that they felt like they were exploding?
Perhaps it was the panic of the situation that flung Doc into such a place, but he felt strangely calm as he pondered this fate. If he was going to buy the farm this way, it would at least give him a conundrum in which to pass his last few remaining seconds.
But if Doc had resigned himself to his fate, the same couldn’t be said of his companions. For a moment they were all frozen to the spot, stunned at what they were seeing. The rock seemed to darken and take shape around the old man, encasing him and gradually becoming more opaque so that his shape was becoming lost within it. It seemed absurd and terrible at the same time. The rock itself didn’t exist, they were sure of that. And yet the mental construct that had formed it seemed to be so strong and vital in its force that it made the intangible solid to the extent that it had the physical force of the real thing.
It was Jak who snapped out of this trance first. The albino teen’s hunting and survival instincts kicked in, overriding the shock that had momentarily stopped him dead. Without a word, he sprang forward, plunging himself into the rock.
Why it worked, he had no idea. In fact, the question didn’t even occur to him. Jak didn’t hesitate. And maybe that was the crux of the matter. He didn’t give the construct a thought. Someone put it in his mind, and it wasn’t really there. The logical knot that it was seemingly so solid as to be trapping Doc didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting the old man out.
Jak felt the rock yield against him only with protest. It was like trying to push heavy rocks out of the way, yet these were rocks that had no edges. It was as though the sheet of solid rock in front of him moved and ground around the force of his momentum, yet didn’t break up into rubble. He felt the pressure against his face and chest, closing his nostrils and constricting him. But where Doc had given in to this and accepted it, Jak wouldn’t.
It couldn’t be doing this, as it wasn’t there. Simple as that.
This clear thinking seemed to have an effect on the illusion that the albino youth couldn’t have foreseen. In truth, he didn’t even notice it, so focused was he on his task. Pushing aside the hardness of the rock with what was little more than an effort of will, he reached out until he grasped Doc’s shoulder. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, as the rock was encircling the old man’s form, and yet he felt the soft cloth of Doc’s frock coat beneath his fingers. He clamped them down hard and pulled on the old scholar, to spin him.
Doc felt the hand and was puzzled. A hand through rock? Surely that wasn’t possible. He was shocked more than any other emotion when he felt himself turn in what was, to him, a solid coffin, only to find that Jak’s face was in front of his own. Bizarrely, and in a way that he couldn’t explain, it seemed to merge with the rock that should have been there.
Dr. Theophilus Tanner was a man who was no stranger to madness. He recognized it. In the same way, as strange as this situation was, he knew that it was not insanity. On the contrary, it made perfect sense. His own belief in the power of the intelligence that created this illusion was now helping it to keep up that very thing. As a result, the only way for it to end, and for him to be saved, was…
“Hit me,” he said to Jak. It came out cracked and barely audible, but it was enough. Jak looked into Doc’s eyes, and even if he couldn’t phrase exactly what he saw, he grasped it on an instinctive level. He pulled back his free hand and hit out. Even with the resistance, real or imagined, that the rock provided, he was still able to muster enough power to connect with Doc’s jaw hard enough for it to make the lights go out behind Doc’s eyes. The whites showed as they rolled up into his head, and he slumped toward the ground.
A ground that was now solid and unencumbered by the illusion of a wall of rock. It was as if, without Doc’s belief—a belief that he had tried his hardest to deny but had, paradoxically, only reinforced by so doing—the intelligence that had formed the defense had nothing on which to build.
Ryan whistled softly. He turned and looked around at the other three, who were a few yards behind him. Krysty was still hunkered on the ground, while J.B. and Mildred had huddled together, perhaps unconsciously. Their eyes were fixed at a point beyond him; beyond even where Jak stood over Doc’s inert frame, bending over him in solicitation now that the necessary force had been exerted.
Beyond the area where the rock wall had seemingly been, there was an expanse of bare and arid land, scorched and blasted by the hot winds of the nukecaust and still enough of a hot spot for little other than some shriveled shrub to have prospered in the intervening years. And beyond this, where the land rose slightly in level until it formed a ragged lip, there was another chasm. It was a deep, wide split in the earth that extended for hundreds of yards. The shadowed contour of the rock face forming the far wall of the chasm could be plainly seen. It was a gash in the earth that ran in an irregular line, widening and then narrowing along its path. Unlike the earlier illusion, this had the random look of nature, and didn’t veer off at strange angles from the periphery of vision. Unlike the previous chasm, and the mountainous wall, this had dust disturbed in eddies and whorls by the air currents that were stirred by the depths of what was, Ryan was certain, a canyon.
And, with a sinking feeling in his gut, he could have sworn he knew which one.
“Is that one real?” J.B. asked hesitantly.
Ryan swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and nodded.
“Yeah, that one’s the real deal.”
There was something in his tone that made Mildred look at him askance. “You sound certain,” she murmured.
“Makes sense now,” he said cryptically, shrugging. “I never really believed all those stories, but the look of that…and what’s happened to us.”
“Mancos Canyon,” Krysty said softly. “I’d always figured that those stories were just that…not that there was any truth in them.”
Jak turned back so that he was facing her. His brow was furrowed.
“Stories?” he queried.
“I fear I am with you on this one,” Doc agreed. “You speak of these as though they are common knowledge. Perhaps to you. But not to everyone.”
“Sorry, Doc,” Ryan said absently. “It’s just that they were the kinds of tales that you spin around the fire at night, on watches, to stop yourself falling asleep unless you wanted nightmares.”
J.B. walked past the one-eyed man and looked to the split in the earth that lay in front of them. He took off his fedora and scratched his head, lost for a moment in thought. Then, without looking around, he said, “Mancos, eh? Rumors have always swirled about that place.”
Doc was becoming a little exasperated, and it was reflected in his tone. “This is all very well, but if there is some legend attached to this place that may, perhaps, have some bearing on what we are about to face, then I think that you should tell those of us who are not privy to the knowledge. It would, after all, help.”
“I don’t know if you could dignify it with the word legend,” Krysty began reflectively. “The region got blasted in the nukecaust. So hot that no one could go near it for generations. But along the way there were those who wandered off the tracks and ended up here. Now mebbe you’d think that anyone who did that would end up as shriveled as an old man’s dick that had been left out in the sun too long. If you did, then you’d be wrong. Most who disappeared into this region were never seen again. Those who were, well, when they were seen again, those who knew them said they were…different.”
The way in which she let that last word hang in the air made
Mildred shiver. Different in what way? she wondered. More to the point was another thought, to which she gave voice.
“So you’re telling me that we’re headed into an area that is full of nukeshit still, and from which people either don’t come back, or if they do they’re not even recognizable to their friends?”
“Something like that,” Krysty said in a tone that managed to be both flat and grim at the same time.
Mildred whistled. “Sounds like we’re in for a real fun time.”
“Quite,” Doc added quickly. “But I think the real question for me is, in what way changed? Are we to expect that we will become in some way infected by radiation and covered with sores and distortion of the features? Or will we somehow develop some kind of mutation?”
“Like the ones that you think nearly caused you to buy the farm?” Krysty countered. There was an edge of hostility in her voice. “You think that because it’s evil then it must be mutie traits? You think that’s why these people—the ones who were seen again—were so changed?”
“My dear, I do not know,” Doc said mildly. “That is the sole reason that I ask. Being mutie is not itself a bad thing. You must surely know me well enough by now to know that I would not countenance such a thought. But it would require a kind of power that is only possessed by those who are muties to achieve the things we have seen.”
Krysty gave a short, barking laugh. “Guess you’re right about that, Doc. Mebbe that’s why I’m getting so bastard defensive. Doomie sense is one thing, but this is more than that. Far more.”
Mildred had moved forward so that she was standing next to J.B. “So what was it about those who returned that had changed?” she asked.
Krysty thought about that for a moment before answering.
“They had a darkness all around them. Not just in the way that their attitude to people they had known had changed. They seemed to relate to everything and everyone in a different manner. Even dogs didn’t like them. Come to think of it, that’s a good way to describe it. It was like they looked at those around them in the same way that everyone else looked at dogs.”
“Another step up the evolutionary ladder, another link in the evolutionary chain,” Doc mused almost to himself. “That is an interesting idea. Before the proliferation of fools tampering with nukes, and then the nukecaust itself did nothing more than prove the random nature of nature itself, there was an idea that those who had what we call mutie powers were some kind of preliminary breakthrough to the next step of humanity. So maybe, if those who wander this way survive and are changed by that which lies ahead of us now, maybe they feel that kind of superiority.”
“I’ll tell you what really worries me,” Mildred added softly. “What if the reason they think that is because someone or something is telling them that? Where does that leave us?”
“Up to our necks in shit,” Ryan stated succinctly. “That wouldn’t be the first time.”
“You know, we can sit here and wonder all we want, but the only way we’re really going to find out is if we go and have a look for ourselves,” J.B. said with a faraway tone that was reflective of the way in which he was looking to the horizon, and the gaping maw that split the land in front of it.
Ryan shrugged. His old friend was right, of course. They began the march toward what they hoped would be a real answer to all the questions that were bubbling inside them.
One thing was obvious from the start: whatever intelligence had been working on them, and however it had worked, that was now at an end. The land where the illusory rock carapace had stood was proof enough of this on its own. Where the land that had led up to it had seemed smooth and unmarked, now they could see that the land behind them was marked with tracks that were obviously other than their own—obvious because they now stretched across the space that had seemingly been taken up by rock before, and beyond that across the land leading toward the lip of the canyon.
J.B. looked up at the sky. There was some cloud cover, but it was high and thin, barely more than a haze in places. And hardly moving as it drifted slowly across the scorching sun. Down below, where they wearily and warily trudged across the hard-packed dirt, there was no movement at all in the air. It was still. Perhaps it had been that way for most of the time since the first scouring winds of skydark had cleared the land and left it to chill. Then, as his eyes scanned from the skies down to ground level, he could see the immutable proof of the land’s still nature. The ground ahead of them was crisscrossed by trails. Some were made by human feet, others by the hooves of pack animals. Although it took a moment for the fact to sink in, he also realized that there were no wag or bike traces among the paths that had been trudged across the loose dirt. Maybe that said that the way down into the canyon—where, presumably, some kind of life was possible—was too narrow and precarious for such luxuries.
One thing was for sure: the tracks had been made over a long period of time. There was a massive amount of overlap, where one trail was crossed, often many times, by others. Some were ground deep into the dirt, impacted by repetition so that they ran deeper. But as the land around here was so arid, none seemed to have been baked into mud. Instead, they rested precariously on loose soil that should have made them things of an ephemeral nature. Their longevity said much for the bizarre conditions of the region.
And now they were adding to them. It would be simple for anyone to see where they had been, and where they were going, if they wanted to follow in their wake. But even as the thought occurred to Ryan, he realized that not only was there no place to hide out here on the flat, but whoever lived in the canyon would already know of their presence either because they had been alerted by the defenses…or because they were the defenses.
It was a chilling thought that they were walking toward an enclosed space and people who were most probably aware of their presence, people who had cover while the companions were out in the open.
Perhaps it was his preoccupation with those thoughts that made the distance between where they had started and the lip of the canyon seem to pass by in less than the blink of an eye. Maybe, too, they had increased their pace with the knowledge that they were now within sight of their prey. For there was little doubt that the party they had been pursuing had descended into the canyon. There was a trail that they could follow plainly. It ran from the path that they, themselves, had traversed, and carried on ahead. The number of feet that had impressed upon the land was consistent—the children of the ville, and the men who had taken them.
J.B. thought about what Baron K had told them about the men who had come into the ville: how they had acted, how they had conspired to move themselves into a position where they were able to take the children with no resistance from the men and women of a ville that was renowned for its hard-bitten fighters. He suppressed a shudder at what Ryan had agreed for them to take on. It would have been hard enough to tackle them at any point on the route, let alone to follow them into their own territory.
His mind was still mulling that over when the companions reached the lip of the canyon. The strata of rock spinning away below them into the shadows were layered in geometric patterns that were awesome in their precision. The shadows, too, were layered in this way as shards of light caught on gleaming stone.
Yet that wasn’t what immediately caught the eye. Certainly, it was something even more awesome—and yet completely apposite and bizarre—that caused Krysty to gasp, “Gaia, it’s beautiful.”
Mildred smiled wryly. “Yeah, but it’s got trouble written all over it.”
Chapter Five
Baron K was thoughtful as he left Morgan. The old man had recovered, but had been more taciturn than usual. After his outburst, he had refused to be drawn on what he had seen in his vision state. Even the direst threats that the baron could make—worse than chilling, the torture that preceded but stopped short all the time, suspending
him on the edge of oblivion without ever taking the plunge—couldn’t shift him from his silence.
That disturbed K more than anything. If anyone knew what he was capable of, then it was the old man. Trusted lieutenants came and went without much in the way of trust when you were a baron, but someone like Morgan—a seer whose insights were important, and whose cache with a sometimes disgruntled populous could never be an underestimated tool—was an invaluable ally, and as such would be privy to things that it was best others didn’t know. Morgan had seen the worst of the baron, and he knew to what lengths K would go to achieve his aims. The old man had been smart in the past, and had known when to counsel and when to shut up and nod. Never had he been so—what was the word?—defiant.
Whatever the old man had seen, it had frightened him so much that he was prepared to incur the wrath of his baron rather than relive it. For it wasn’t as if he didn’t want to speak. It was stronger than that. It was as though to just speak what he had seen would bring it all flooding back in such a way that would drive him into the abyss of insanity.
K mused that he could make the old man talk. That would be easy. Everyone had his or her point of no return, after which their tongues would be loosened no matter what their threshold and their tolerance to pain.
But what would that achieve? Did he really want to hear whatever it was that Morgan had seen?
He reached his palace. His wasn’t a rich ville, and in truth his home was only a palace in relation to the hovels that the rest of the population had for homes. K may be the ruler of this land, but it was a poor land in relation to much of the rest of the wasteland. The soil was poor for farming and the keeping of livestock, and much of the food they had came about as a result of trade. Not that they had much to trade with. When K had arrived here, it was a ville that was on the verge of extinction. Now it was barely alive and breathing. But it was there, crawling and scratching its way to some hope of prosperity.