“Did you know of this?” he asked, exalted.
“No, I did not.”
“Our god, sir,” Griswail interposed proudly, “is truly with us.”
Murie but squeezed my arm, her eyes all bright with happy tears.
I said nothing to Griswall, since there was nothing to say. I could in part explain myself and my “magick”; but the Pug Boos-never. I didn’t even try.
If my seven were struck dumb with religious fervor, not so the Omnians. In them the Boos had evoked but a ripple of laughter at what they perhaps presumed was some sort of animal act. For Om was not Marack, and Pug Boos there were in no way sacred…. -
The laughter, however, soon died; this, when it was seen that each Boo carried a small metallic object. Hooli, of the tam and bootie seated himself, cross-legged, in the ensuing silence. He placed the object to his lips and blew three soft but penetrating notes.
Their effect was similar to words that trigger a post-hypnotic act-except that the notes would key a hereditary memory pattern, dormant for five thousand years. The very sound of those notes was sufficient to pin all Omnians to their seats for whatever length of time that Hoolis band” would choose to hold them.
I watched, unbelieving, though I’d seen it all before. There they sat, five fat-fannied facsimiles of a Terran koala bear with raccoon hands; all of them playing music such as those Omnians had never heard before, nor would again, except by Pug Boos, on any tape, disk, or crystal gauge….
Light from the guttering candles and oil lamps seemed to leap to the sound of the music, to dance in weird shadowshapes upon the walls and ceiling. And there was color, too. Blues. Reds. Yellows. Blazing and melding into an ever changing kaleidoscopic light show of joy or horror, depending upon one’s point of view. And the sound and the colors seemed three dimensional, tangible, palpable.
Outside, as we were told later, the storm had instantly subsided. More! The clouds had parted to allow the silvered light of small Ripple and then Capil, Fregis’ two moons, to cast a sheen in their passing o’er all the great rain-sparkling meadow. And those within the tents, all of them, came out to stare toward the castle and to listen to the Pug Boo’s music.
It was symphonic: a medley of every reed or brass or string or pipe that had ever been played anywhere in the Galaxy. There was no explaining it or its source. I’d seen the instruments. It was simply a hollow tube of some unknown metal upon which no one else could produce a single note. And the tube existed, or it didn’t, at the Pug Boos’ pleasure.
And so they listened-we listened, rather. And my mind was invaded with sound and mood and imagery, each facet a variation of a thousand themes, melding, expanding, to explode into great bursts of light that was not light, into a blackness of space that was not space. And through it all a thread emerged, a theme which had most likely touched upon the subconscious of northern men for all their lives upon this planet. It was a mind-story of worlds shattered and ruined in seas of roiling fission, of a holocaust beyond understanding. There was the repetitive image too, of the humanoid planet, Alpha-before the fall; a world of indescribable beauty. The events shown were of its death in the great cataclysm, and the reason. There was a hint, too, of total evil, a suggested horror so enormous as to blast the mind that sought to understand it….
Yet still another thread ran through it all-a suggestion of beauty, peace, and above all, hope. And as I listened I knew that those around me would see what they were meant to see-the dim view of the faery world which once was theirs, though they would know it not; nor would they truly remember, after. For the Pug Boos-and of this I was sure-sought only, as of this moment, but the vaguest of contacts between the now of Om and that other, far time, of Alphian ascendancy. The thread, however, and its touching, would change them forever.
And that was the fact and the deed of the Pug Boos’ music!
In all of Galactic history there was no counterpart, no parallel: As an Adjuster I could not help but be impressed. Still I was reminded of a question I’d put to Hooli immediately after the battle of Dunguring as to just who in the bloody hell he really was. He’d replied in his infuriating way that in terms of adjusting, he was Universal while I was merely Galactic.
The thought had been frightening then, it remained so now. The difference between the two of us in personal, gut terms, was plainly obvious.
Here I was with armor and greatsword, a magick “belt” to bedazzle the natives, and a laser factor whose efficacy was wholly dependent upon a fast-waning energy pack. With this handful of trifles I’d pitted myself against an alien entity with a potential for the Fomaihaut system’s destruction. Hooli and his cohorts, on the other hand, risked nothing! Still it was they who called the play, determined the scenario.
With each hard-won gain I’d made, there he’d be, ready again to press the proper button to set the stage for another victory. The clincher was that to attain it, I’d still have to fight, to risk my ass, and to lead others to do likewise in one more battle-while he risked nothing.
The true irritant, however, was my own Adjuster knowledge of an undeniable fact: With or without his help the course I followed was, objectively, the only logical one. A cause to wonder, perhaps, where Alexander really came from, and who or what were Arthur, Mao, or Tengsin Pata.
As is true of all creatures the brain of a dottle serves a dottle’s purpose. There is no known reason, for example, why a dottle will pace itself -at exactly twenty miles per hour for any distance beyond a half a mile or so; this, when they sense or know that there’ll be many more miles to travel. Moreover, they can keep it up without tiring for many hours. Distances on Fregis-Camelot, therefore, are reckoned in so many dottle hours…. The area covered in our recruiting was restricted to approximately fifty miles in every direction save toward Hish.
No point, we decided, in beating a kettledrum under the Dark One’s very window.
The high point of Sernas’ dinner had been at eight. Within but a few hours the nearest contingents of warriors had already arrived. They were hastily marshaled under certain young lords to join with the first five thousand and were thrown in a peripheral screen, or line, at about three miles from our stronghold, and in the direction of the Omnian capital.
More and more arrived; each company with an added dottle pack so that the broad fields around the castle soon teemed with them.
Necessity breeding simplicity, our plan was a simple one. We would advance with all speed at dawn’s light. Our main force would consist of ten thousand. Flanking units would be to the amount of twenty-five hundred each. Another five thousand would be immediately to our force, ready instantly to overwhelm any opposition at front or either flank, until such time as we’d arrived at the gates of Hish, or a major battle had been enjoined.
With luck we’d be battering at the capital’s walls before high noon. With more luck-plus the heaven-splitting arrival of our Marackian thirty thousand-we’d be into the city and besieging the temple itself as darkness fell.
Rawl asked and received the command of the roving five thousand. I think he wanted to fight on his own terms, to show the Omnians what a Northerner could do without the Collin’s “aura” to protect him. I let him go. He chose Hargis, Charney, and Caroween as his body swordsmen. Young Sernas and his blooded-sybarites would be his lieutenant-captains spread out among the companies. Tober and Griswall would remain with me to guard the lives of the Princess of Marack and myself.
In the small hours the “Collin’s curse” caught up with me. I was again dead-tired, bone-weary, while the others seemed as fresh as kiddies at a birthday party. I begged leave to sleep the last few hours ‘til dawn.
What I’d guessed, indeed, had hoped would also happen did. I’d hardly closed my eyes after first assuring myself that Murie was asleep-in her innocence, her Fregisian head had but to touch a pillow-when Hooli came, with his companions. They sat in mid-air, limned by blue lightning from beyond the windows-and I saw all this through tight-shut eyes. They sat and stared,
with kneeless legs flat out, sedately folded paws on furry tummies. Hooli was in the center, flanked on either side by two of the four. He’d found his missing bootie, too.
The five of them spoke with a single voice, inside my head. The communal delivery was straight; no attempt at the ancient Terran idiom that Hooli used.
“Collin” they announced solemnly, “The peril mounts, comes closer. We know the time now of the Dark One’s effort, the exact minute when he’ll make his attempt. There are less hours than we’d hoped for.”
I mentally yawned, for I was tired. I groaned, too, mentally. “All right. So how long do we have?”
“Dawn breaks in three hours. There will be fourteen hours of daylight and four of darkness. The Dark One had set his mechanism to function coinciding with an exact alignment of the north-south magnetic lines of Fregis, the pyramid, and the two moons, Capil and Ripple. The conjunction of all factors will provide for but a slight additional surge of energy. But apparently he needs it”
“Eighteen hours’?”
“That’s right The risk is great; too great, in fact. We would therefore now suggest that you change your plans.”
“To what?”
“That you at once attack-with your ship. You know the place of the mechanism, the sky-room of the pyramid. Destroy it with the ship.”
“Destroy? How? The scoutship’s unarmed. The only weapon I have is the laser, and the energy pack’s near dead on that”
“Ram it!”
“Ram it?” I repeated incredulously. “Ram the pyramid? Are you out of your pea-brain skulls?”
They said nothing, just sat there watching me sadly. I took a deep breath, said softly,
“You really mean it. You’re really asking me to kill myself.”
“Better you, Collin, than all this beauteous world.”
“Dammmmnnnn!”
“You might survive.” Their collective voice was frightening.
“I might survive?” I breathed. ‘Well, screw you, you little brown-bag sons-of-bitches.
Why don’t you do it? Yeah! Why don’t you? It’s you who have the power. You’re the real ‘game players.’ The way I see it, the five of you could make a nova of both Fomalhauts in the time it takes me to say it”
And then I yelled, mentally, in petulant, driven anger. “To hell with the lot of you. I’ve had it!”
“Collin. We cannot do it”
“Gog shit!”
“We are not permitted.”
“Really? And who or what exists in all this universe to deny you permission?”
The collective hesitated. Time passed. They finally said, “We are not programmed for the destruction of life-“
I interrupted: “What about the sterilization job you did on Alpha?”
“-above a class ‘C’ category.”
“Class ‘C’?”
“Mollusks. Anemones.”
It suddenly reached me. “Not programmed? Are you telling me that you’re a bunch of damned computers? If that’s so, gentlemen, I’ll bow out right now and to hell with your lousy games. I’ve walked knee-deep in blood on this damned planet-for you. And now you’re telling me to cancel myself out so you can win your game. Unh-uhh. Nyett. I’ll blank you out, kiddies. Whatever’s done from here on in, I’ll do it, and I’ll do it my way!”
“If you do, Mack,” an intruding voice insinuated; and it was no longer that of the collective, “If you do, you’re a dead monkey. Without us, Ace, you couldn’t win a stud hand with a royal flush!”
“Is that you, Hooli?”
“Who else, butter brain?”
I sighed deeply. “All right. In one word, Hooli: Are you a machine?”
“Nope.”
“Well? Go on…”
“That’s all.”
“No way.-Prove it.”
“I love you, Collin,” Hooli said.
“And I love you. But in my quarters at Foundation H.Q. I’ve got an eight-hundred-year-old koala-bear bank, which I also love. It looks like you. It rolls Its’ eyes, waves its’ fanny and squeaks when I put a facsimile, England Isle, ‘shilling’ in.
“We are not computers.”
“Prove it.”
“All right! You asked for it! I’m going to give you one peek, just a flash, buby, at what I look like. And you know’ what’s going to happen? You’re going to implode. That’s how bad it will be…. Are you ready for that? Just brace yourself and let me know.”
I hesitated. I had good reason to. As an Adjuster, I’ve seen a lot of life forms; some that humanoids were simply not meant to see. Just the thought of what Hooli might look like scared the hell out of me. And, too, I knew he wasn’t a robot. Adjuster training can spot a sentient, occupied-or in occupation! Actually, I’d thought to rattle them with my accusation. I shrugged, grinned, mentally, saying, “Forget it. I’ll have a look at you after-maybe.”
“Then you’ll do it? Hit the pyramid with the scoutship?”
“I sure as hell won’t!”
He leaned forward until his little wet nose touched mine. His beady eyes blinked.
“You’d risk Fregis, Marack-the Princess?”
“Not exactly. Like I said, I’ll do it my way.”
“You’ll let it all die?” he insisted, “just like that?” He snapped two furry fingers; the ensuing sound being like the Zen clap of a single hand.
I sighed. “Get off my back. In my book you guys are copout, rat-finks; which goes with that scared homily you implanted in all Northern heads, that ‘gentle Pug Boos never go to war.’ In a couple of hours, bag-belly, I’ll be marching out to take on the Dark One. The five of you can help, and take your chances like the rest of us, or you can sit on your little fat asses and watch all Fregis atomized-if we lose.”
Hooli said solemnly, “You’re a hard man, Magee.”
There was a deliberate twinkle in his eyes which I didn’t like.
“What’s it going to be?”
“We’ll have to think about it.”
“Sheeeee!” I sighed again.
The five of them still sat serene, their fluffy bodies glowing in my mind’s eye.
“Collin?” It was the collective voice again.
“Yeah?”
“You must make no attempt to contact the Deneb-3.”
“How can I? If I do, with the ‘null’ screen down, there goes the game.”
“Just the same, you could be tempted.”
“So? I’m tempted.” Then I took a page from their book, saying coyly-“I’ll have to think about it.”
At which their extremities lit up, kyrillian style, a signal that they were cutting out. The collective voice said, “Kyrie Fern. We’ll help you, but you might not like it.”
“Just what the hell does that mean?”
“We’ll sound three notes at the key intervals, connecting their subconscious to their past. The effect will be less fear and, conversely, more overt objectivity. That should be worth a few battalions.”
“Fine. But what is it that! might not like?”
“We’ll see.”
I said, “You bastards!” And with that they faded into the darkness of my mind, though I could still hear a faint singing-Hooli’s voice. The words of the ditty were, as usual, from the archaic. Hooli sang: “C’est la lutte finale! Groupons-nous a demain.”
And when you think about it, how better to distinguish a sentient from a non-sentient than with the use of humor-even the slightly perverted cutting edge that Hooli used.
The Dark One was stirring!
I knew it the moment I opened my eyes. Despite all efforts to mentally prepare myself for the shock of his knowledge of me, the effect of it was as a sword’s blade along the length of my spine.
How did I know it? Well there was a tingling at the base of my skull and a far off humming from the direction of Hish, no more. The damn thing was scanning. It had touched upon the imbedded node. And then it was gone. Thank Ormon for the scoutship, or whatever. We donned full armor, dressing each
other, Murie and I. Then we joined Lord Sernas, staff, Rawl, Caroween, Griswall and our stalwarts for a hearty breakfast of black bread, gogmeat and milk; the last being laced with a potent facsimile of Omnian rum to drive off the dawn’s chill. I took a second tankard.
“The master knows!” had been the first words Sernas said to me, thus substantiating my own precognition. I ignored his remark, discussing instead the condition and deployment of the warrior companies.
Outside on the meadow the long ghostly lines of mounted, waiting men seemed as so many menhir dolmens in the lifting mists. The herds of dottles also waited. They would follow our progress at a distance of two miles; my orders. No use subjecting them to unwarranted peril. Bad enough that unlike in the north, whereat all fighting, excepting tournaments and the like, was done on foot so as not to endanger gentle dottles, here it would be otherwise.
Still, unlike the previous days, the dottles were no longer sad. Indeed, they were happy; frisky, even. They had obviously drawn some benefit from the spread of Pug Boo “goodness”. Even as I watched one of them gave a wet and slobbery kiss to a young dottle-warden who then leapt grinning into his saddle, unaccustomed and somewhat embarrassed by the dottle’s loving gesture.
And need I say that I too was aware of the Pug Boo’s ongoing, sub-audible music?
For it was there. Obtrusive. Insistent. There’d be a minute of it, then nothing. And then, a half hour later, perhaps three minutes, and like that. As stated, you couldn’t really hear it. It was more an internal thing, like the silent view of wind gusts in the branches of great trees-a soughing, whispering, unheard, but felt. One could see the effect, however, in the rapt faces that gazed toward the Omnian capital with an almost exalted composure. I was quite sure of one thing. There was hard determination there. They would fight and fight well…
The thirty miles to Hish consisted of rolling country, forests, fields and fast-flowing streams. The streams were small since it was late summer and, too, the area was more or less highlands with an altitude of three thousand feet or more. The forests and fields gave way to open farmland, broad meadows and villages in the final fifteen miles.
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