Beyond the Black Enigma

by Gardner Francis Fox

  "No more a threat? But—

  Rhyddoan nodded, growling, "They came again, the Toparrs, and now they had better weapons than they possessed before. They had the taraths now, that shot the white balls of energy, and the people of Rhyllan had only their swords and lances, bows, arrows and axes like this one.”

  Craig shook his head. “Now this I cannot understand. A people who can travel across space-assuming they did—will surely have better weapons than Swords and bows. It makes no sense.”

  He lifted up the thin weapon he had found in one of the burial vaults. "Something like this, for instance. It may not even be a weapon, I don't know. But my instinct tells me it is.”

  The thing was passed to Fiachra who examined it and shook his head. "I know the words, but not such an object as this.” Nor did any other man of all the many who crowded about to examine the ax and the book.

  "Is there no legend about a weapon like this?" Fiachra peered at him intently. "There was a time when the Rhydd could harness the lightning and the sun. This may be an artifact by which they did it.”

  Craig turned it over and over in his fingers. "I shall test it. Then we will see. It may not work after so long a time, however.”

  Rhyddoan growled, "There may be more such weapons in the graves, Craig. Search for them, if you will. If my people can make these work, they will be more than a match for the Toparrs.”

  The commander nodded. "I will hunt tomorrow.”

  Chapter Five

  The next day he looked long and patiently in the burial vaults, without result. He and Fiona crawled begrimed into one mausoleum and out another. They touched dust that had been men, and little bits of pottery, and here and there a medallion or a string of beads, but no weapons could be found.

  They did not stay so long in Uphor this day. The ancient quiet of these tombs triggered a chord of worry in Craig. He had been on so many star assignments, in so many danger spots, that a sixth sense in his mind was alerted to trouble. It was as if he could smell it.

  The danger smell was stronger when they came walking through the forests. The woods were still. Too still, too silent. There should have been the sound of a voice, the thunk of an ax on wood, the sharp thump of a hammerhead. Even Fiona looked puzzled.

  She would have broken away to run ahead down the path but his hand tugged her back. "Be careful." he said, lifting The Imp into firing position.

  A body lay to one side of the trail. It was a lookout —or what was left of him after a white energy ball had hit him. Fiona cried out sharply, then covered her mouth with her hand.

  "It's Beric,” she breathed.

  "The Toparrs were here, Craig nodded, and moved off the path and in between the tree-boles, gesturing the girl to follow him. She came swiftly, SE supple grace, making no sound in her soft leather slippers.

  They found two more bodies a little further on. Craig remembered the men whom Rhyddoan had ordered out into the woods. Apparently they had put up a good fight, for now he began to see dead yellow humanoids, scattered under bushes and half hidden by patches of woods-grass. All had been shot in the throat.

  The chain of corpses brought them at last to the clearing where the village once had stood. Now there was only char and the smell of smoke and red embers glowing. Across the compound lay the bodies of the dead, Rhydd and Toparr alike. Fiona was weeping softly, trying to muffle the sound of her crying by pressing her knuckles into her lips.

  "They are dead, all dead,” she wept. "Perhaps not. The Toparrs may have taken prisoners with them. We'll have to see if there are any left alive."

  It was a grim search. Fiachra lay crumpled over his broken harp. Half across his inert body was a dead Toparr, his head all but sliced from his torso. And beyond him, dead Rhyddoan stood propped with his back to a charred building wall, the great battle-ax still in his hands. He towered in death. Five Toparrs lay dead at Rhyddoan's feet, and his eyes were wide open as if he stared on realms invisible to living men. They found Weldon Grenvil, they found other men and the women who had died fighting beside their males, and here and there a child. The Toparrs must have taken most of the children, there were so few small bodies.

  Fiona said, "If we'd stayed, it might have made a difference.” There was a terrible sorrow in her voice which might lead to hysteria in a few minutes. He must keep her busy.

  Find someone still alive, if you can. Hurry, Fiona! When she stared at him dully, he explained, "If we can find a Toparr, we may be able to learn where they went.”

  "They went into the Beyond,” she murmured dully, but she began to walk among the dead as he requested.

  Half in and half out of the charred meeting hall, she knelt beside a dying man whose eyelids quivered and rose. At her soft cry, Craig hurried to drop beside her, recognizing the man as a lesser chief who had commanded warriors.

  "The Toparrs came a little before noon, he whispered. “We fought well—Rhythane knows how well —but they were too many and their weapons were too strong. We killed scores but they slaughtered us. Except for the few they took away.

  "The little ones? The children?” Fiona asked. “They took them all except a few of the older ones who fought. The Toparrs always take the children alive. Why, I do not know.”

  His voice had grown weaker as he talked. Fiona lifted his head to make his passing easier, and wept over him with tears streaking her tanned cheeks. Craig stood up, not liking what he must do, but understanding its necessity.

  Alone he went among the dead, peering closely into all the yellow faces. One Toparr might be alive. Just one, was all he asked. A single yellow half-man to tell him something he desperately needed to know,

  He had given up hope when he heard the twig break. He whirled, diving as a brilliant white ball shot past him. If he had been a second slower, the ball would have hit him in the middle of the back.

  Craig lay flat, belly hugging the forest floor. Slowly he lifted his elbows, planting them in soft loam. Using his elbows as hands, The Imp ready, he began his crawl. The white ball had come from behind him, so he knew generally the position of the Toparr. He did not want to kill the yellow creature. He wanted him alive.

  It took time. His worst fear was that Fiona would come hunting for him, calling out his name and alerting the Toparr of her presence. The Toparr would shoot her then and he might not be able to stop him without killing.

  The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead. Inch by inch. And then pause. And wait. Inch ahead a little more, muscles quivering with strain, hands gripping The Imp too tightly. His eyes sought between the boles and through the branches of the bushes for a hint of yellow. He slid forward another foot.

  Ah, there! So close he might reach out to touch!

  Craig gathered up his legs up under him, then leaped. His hands went out, thrust down into the Toparr just where his neck met his shoulders, driving his face into the dirt. The yellow man-thing screamed in pain as Craig rammed hard knees into the small of his back. His hands were wet, warm, red, the commander saw.

  The Toparr was badly wounded. His sudden attack had caused him to lose consciousness once again, but Craig waited patiently. Within moment he felt the man-thing stir. Then he tightened his bloody fingers again and felt the scream rise upward to be choked off by tightening muscles. Craig bent down.

  "The prisoners you took: How can I follow them?” The Toparr shook its head weakly. “You—cannot. Only the Toparrs can cross over into the Beyond,” it telepathed.

  Craig smiled coldly and put his weight and muscles to use. The yellow half-man screamed thickly, his back arching in the agony. When Craig eased his grip, he said, "Now speak the truth or I keep on doing what causes you so much pain. How can you cross over into the Beyond?”

  Craig did not like to use torture to gain his ends, but he played for high stakes. The inhabitants of many planets beyond the black enigma might be wiped out of existence unless he crossed over to where the Toparrs went. He crouched here, sweating, knowing that Fiona had come closer and was watch
ing him with horrified eyes.

  Well, let her look! She was seeing Commander John Craig of Alert Command at work. His was not a nice job. There were only a few men psychologically and psychologically able to do this sort of thing. He was only one of these men who stepped into disaster assignments when nothing else would work.

  The Toparr moaned. Craig bent closer.

  "How?” he asked.

  For a moment the yellow man-thing was silent. Then its lips moved and it telepathed, "My belt. Controls. Turn them to red for Beyond. I....”

  Craig eased his grip, turned the Toparr over, yanked free its belt. Then he stood up and looked at Fiona. To his surprise, she was smiling grimly.

  "Did you think it would matter to me what you did with—that thing?” she asked. "It and others of its kind killed my people. My father, my mother, my brother. I—found them—back there.”

  Her chin quivered but she straightened and looked at him. "It won't do any good, it won't bring them back—but I will never complain about your hurting a Toparr.”

  "It may do some good. He held up the belt, letting her see it. “With this and another belt, you and I can go into the Beyond.”

  Her hazel eyes rose from the belt to his face. There was a cold fury in her features, a hunger for vengeance, the pagan wish to repay an eye with an eye. She nodded slowly.

  "Good. I need a belt, then. I will get my own. Understanding came to Craig suddenly that Fiona of the Rhydd was a girl no longer; this day had matured her as the years alone might never have done.

  She came back within minutes, a leather belt with a metal circlet on its front tied securely about her slim middle. There were red, black and white segments on the circlet, as well as a dial which could be turned manually. The dials were set on white. Evidently then, if red were the Beyond, the black sector governed travel into the Then, or the past.

  Craig grinned coldly. This belt could take him back to the spaceship. Ah, but not yet. Not yet. First he must go forward in Time, into the future, the Beyond. He must find the crews of those spaceships, first. And the people of the Rhydd who had been taken prisoner.

  After that would be time enough to go back to the star-ships.

  He told Fiona how to work the dials. She listened carefully to his explanation of the transchronal device. "It warps Time, in some manner. I'm no scientist, I leave the scientific stuff to the Ordnance and the lab boys. But it's as if a big hand came down and closed around us—and another hand spun the place where were standing-out of the present, the Now, and into the future, the Beyond.”

  She was smiling apologetically as if to make amends for her stupidity. Her knuckles turned white where they gripped The Imp.

  “All right. Enough lecture. You ready?"

  "Yes. As much as I'll ever be.”

  "Good. Countdown to zero—and turn. On."

  Fiona drew a deep breath. "Three. Two. One. Zero—turn.”

  There was no sensation Craig remembered he had not been aware of being shifted into the Now from the Then where the spaceships were marooned. There was a blurring here, however, as the trees seemed to shimmer and melt all around him for the brief moment of a heartbeat.

  As his gaze swept the woods, he understood that blurring. These trees were not the trees that had been all around him an instant before. These were far larger and there were many more of them.

  This was the same forest the people of Rhyddoan had known, advanced a long time into the future. It was a pristine forest, virginal—as if untouched a long time by human hands. There were no dead Toparrs, there was no smell of char in the air. How many years into the future they had come, he could not even guess.

  A hundred years? A thousand? He could not tell by looking around him, but he knew it must be more than ten or twenty. There were no pathways any more, they were overgrown, nor were there even any skeletons where the dead bodies had lain.

  He reached out and caught Fiona, drew her closer. "You all right? If I'm right in my thinking, were in the world where the Toparrs live. And where my people and yours are their prisoners.”

  She nodded bravely, smiling up at him. "I understand. We are here to free them and to overcome the Toparrs if we can.”

  It would have been easier to come over alone, he knew, but he could never have abandoned the girl back in her Now. His eyes studied her serious face, tanned and lovely, the wet tear-streaks visible from when they had run through the grime from the graves they had examined.

  He pushed The Imp into her hands. At her surprise, he said, "I don't think I'm going to need that as much as I am something else, in this future time.”

  His fingers unfastened the tie-strings that held the sack to his belt. Opening its mouth he reached inside and drew out the thin metal circlet that was the Halo. He could not fight his way through the Toparrs in this Beyond, but perhaps he could frighten his way through.

  They began their walk through the forests, brushing aside branches, stepping over and through the mold of rotted leaves and the stalks of what looked to be berry bushes. Now and then they heard the cry of big white birds wheeling overhead and the chittering of small rodents somewhere in the woods.

  They walked until Fiona grew tired and sat on a flat rock. Craig leaned his spine against a tree-bole. Somewhere up ahead was danger, the threat of death or perhaps life imprisonment as a captive of the Toparrs. But this was a part of his life, this acceptance of risk.

  It was the lesser things he minded, he decided: the lack of good food, the missing wines and liquors his palate had become accustomed to across the years. He began to think of those times when he had eaten with Elva Marlowe in the fabled restaurants of the Empire.

  The Sunburst Tavern on Dorandal, for instance, that was noted for the fragrant kohlori from the Sea of Dust, served steaming in a chafing dish with bubbling sour cream. Always, it was served with the costly Vin Aroma, usually from the famous 21 vintage, red and piquant. Or there was the time with that belly-dancer he had taken up with during the rebellion on Falanger: He still savored the meal a deux they had feasted over during the quiet midnight hours, the beef a la flamande with the flaming crépes suzettes to top it off, and the several bottles of white orlagne from Siriana that had made the woman amorous.

  Craig sighed. For his palate now there was only stale bread and a few chunks of dried meat in the sac Fiona carried. It would have to do.

  A hand touched his knee. Fiona was crouched, pointing through the trees toward a Toparr where he walked. Craig stiffened, his memories vanishing before this hard reality. The yellow half-man had not seen him. He might bring him down with a single, silent bolt from The Imp.

  He reached for the weapon, then paused. No, not The Imp. Instead—the Halo. He stood there, concentrating. Five seconds became ten, fifteen. And then, out of a tree past which the Toparr was walking, a brown branch grew. It writhed outward, twisting to wrap itself about the yellow creature, hugging him tight. The Toparr screeched. His weapon flew from his fingers as he put both hands around the branch and pushed and writhed against it. He was crying out softly and though he was too far away from Craig to understand his words, he could sense the horror in his voice.

  After a few minutes, the Toparr slid out of the branch that held him. He stared upward at the tree, put a hand toward its bole and drew it back excitedly. Then he turned and ran.

  Behind him the branch hung lifeless, empty. Fiona was shivering, pressing into his leg. Craig grinned and lifted her up, patting her back. He tried to explain how The Halo enabled him to gather the mental forces in his brain and focus their kinetic energies into a creative act.

  "From the atoms floating in the air-dust motes from the gases that are everywhere in the atmosphere, I build matter. Part of it is alchemy, the way in which men long ago on Earth sought to transmute lead into gold, another part is chemistry.”

  He studied her blank expression, then shrugged. "All right, have it your own way. It's magic.”

  Now she nodded cheerfully, laughing and clapping her hands.
"You are a god. I know. I have heard Fiachra speak of Rhythane and what he did for the people of the Rhydd. He fed them, he kept them warm, he did what must be done to protect them.”

  Perhaps Rhythane worked magic, too; a magic which a scientist might explain by the laws of matter, energy and the cell. It was a possibility he must keep in mind.

  He led the girl along the way through the woods, trusting in her experience with these trees in the long ago time that had been her Now to see them safely through them. It was dark when they came to a little stream, and Fiona confessed herself lost.

  It is all different, so different,” she apologized with a wave of the hand. "There is nothing that is the same. Nothing.”

  There would be few landmarks after a hundred years, if the forest had become overgrown after the village of Rhyddoan had been destroyed. They would have better luck tomorrow. Craig sat beside the stream and let his head hang forward between his knees, relaxing. It was an old trick the troopers of the Tenth Spaceborne had taught to him on the trail above the Valley of a Hundred Hells.

  Fiona handed him a bit of bread and meat. “It’s all we have, I should have brought more.” Her face was drawn, pinched with weariness.

  They ate quietly. Craig let his eyes move upward to the sky. There were no stars by which to judge Time, and so he could not even guess whether they were a hundred, a thousand, or fifty thousand years beyond the Now. This was the beyond—Time, where the Toparrs lived. It was all he could be sure of.

  Fiona lay down with her head pillowed on an arm, within touching distance. He smiled at her, receiving a weary twitching of her lips by way of answer.

  "These Toparrs—what do you know about them?”

  "Nothing. They come raiding, they kill, they steal prisoners. No more. What else is there to know?"