American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  “Fall back, thou fools! I say withdraw, thou freaks!”

  At that, they did, moving back beyond thrust-range.

  The man who had spoken was about five and a half feet tall. His lower jaw moved like that of a puppet’s, as though on hinges, and his teeth were like a row of dominoes—all darkstained and clicking as they opened and closed.

  “Yea, Procrustes,” I heard one say.

  “Fetch nets! Snare them alive! Do not close with them! They have cost us too much already!”

  Moreby was at his side, and whimpering.

  “. . . I did not know, m’lord.”

  “Silence! thou brewer of ill-tasting sloshes! Thou hast cost us a god and many men!”

  “Shall we rush?” asked Hasan.

  “No, but be ready to cut the nets when they bring them.”

  “It is not good that they want us alive,” he decided.

  “We have sent many to Hell, to smooth our way,” said I, “and we are standing yet and holding blades. What more?”

  “If we rush them we can take two, perhaps four more with us. If we wait, they will net us and we die without them.”

  “What matters it, once you are dead? Let us wait. So long as we live there is the great peacock-tail of probability, growing from out of the next moment.”

  “As you say.”

  And they found nets and cast them. We cut three of them apart before they tangled us in the fourth. They drew them tight and moved in.

  I felt my blade wrenched from my grasp, and someone kicked me. It was Moreby.

  “Now you will die as very few die,” said he.

  “Did the others escape?”

  “Only for the moment,” he said. “We will track them, find them, and bring them back.”

  I laughed.

  “You lose,” I said. “They’ll make it.”

  He kicked me again.

  “This is how your rule applies?” I asked. “Hasan conquered the Dead Man.”

  “He cheated. The woman threw a flare.”

  Procrustes came up beside him as they bound us within the nets.

  “Let us take them to the Valley of Sleep,” said Moreby, “and there work our wills with them and leave them to be preserved against future feasting.”

  “It is good,” said Procrustes. “Yes, it shall be done.”

  Hasan must have been working his left arm through the netting all that while, because it shot out a short distance and his nails raked Procrustes’ leg.

  Procrustes kicked him several times, and me once for good measure. He rubbed at the scratches on his calf.

  “Why did you do that, Hasan?” I asked, after Procrustes turned away and ordered us bound to barbecue stakes for carrying.

  “There may still be some meta-cyanide left on my fingernails,” he explained.

  “How did it get there?”

  “From the bullets in my belt, Karagee, which they did not take from me. I coated my nails after I sharpened them today.”

  “Ah! You scratched the Dead Man at the beginning of your bout . . .”

  “Yes, Karagee. Then it was simply a matter of my staying alive until he fell over.”

  “You are an exemplary assassin, Hasan.”

  “Thank you, Karagee.”

  We were bound to the stakes, still netted. Four men, at the order of Procrustes, raised us.

  Moreby and Procrustes leading the way, we were borne off through the night.

  As we moved along an uneven trail the world changed about us. It’s always that way when you approach a Hot Spot. It’s like hiking backward through geological eras.

  The trees along the way began to vary, more and more. Finally, we were passing up a moist aisle between dark towers with fern-like leaves; and things peered out through them with slitted, yellow eyes. High overhead, the night was a tarp, stretched tent-wise across the treetops, pricked with faint starmarks, torn with a jagged yellow crescent of a tear. Birdlike cries, ending in snorts, emerged from the great wood. Up further ahead a dark shape crossed the pathway.

  As we advanced along the way the trees grew smaller, the spaces between them wider. But they were not like the trees we had left beyond the village. There were twisted (and twisting!) forms, with seaweed swirls of branches, gnarled trunks, and exposed roots which crept, slowly, about the surface of the ground. Tiny invisible things made scratching noises as they scurried from the light of Moreby’s electric lantern.

  By turning my head I could detect a faint, pulsating glow, just at the border of the visible spectrum. It was coming from up ahead.

  A profusion of dark vines appeared underfoot. They writhed whenever one of our bearers stepped on them.

  The trees became simple ferns. Then these, too, vanished. Great quantities of shaggy, blood-colored lichens replaced them. They grew over all the rocks. They were faintly luminous.

  There were no more animal sounds. There were no sounds at all, save for the panting of our four bearers, the footfalls, and the occasional muffled click as Procrustes’ automatic rifle struck a padded rock.

  Our bearers wore blades in their belts. Moreby carried several blades, as well as a small pistol.

  The trail turned sharply upward. One of our bearers swore. The night-tent was jerked downward at its corners then; it met with the horizon, and it was filled with the hint of a purple haze, fainter than exhaled cigarette-smoke. Slow, very high, and slapping the air like a devilfish coasting on water, the dark form of a spiderbat crossed over the face of the moon.

  Procrustes fell.

  Moreby helped him to his feet, but Procrustes swayed and leaned upon him.

  “What ails you, lord?”

  “A sudden dizziness, numbness in my members. . . . Take thou my rifle. It grows heavy.”

  Hasan chuckled.

  Procrustes turned toward Hasan, his puppet-jaw dropping open.

  Then he dropped, too.

  Moreby had just taken the rifle and his hands were full. The guards set us down, rather ungently, and rushed to Procrustes’ side.

  “Hast thou any water?” he asked, and he closed his eyes.

  He did not open them again.

  Moreby listened to his chest, held the feathery part of his wand beneath his nostrils.

  “He is dead,” he finally announced.

  “Dead?”

  The bearer who was covered with scales began to weep.

  “He wiss good,” he sobbed. “He wiss a great war shief. What will we do now?”

  “He is dead,” Moreby repeated, “and I am your leader until a new war chief is declared. Wrap him in your cloaks. Leave him on that flat rock up ahead. No animals come here, so he will not be molested. We will recover him on the way back. Now, though, we must have our vengeance on these two.” He gestured with his wand. “The Valley of Sleep is near at hand. You have taken the pills I gave you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yiss.”

  “Very good. Take your cloaks now and wrap him.”

  They did this, and soon we were raised again and borne to the top of a ridge from which a trail ran down into a fluorescent, pock-blasted pit. The great rocks of the place seemed almost to be burning.

  “This,” I said to Hasan, “was described to me by my son as the place where the thread of my life lies across a burning stone. He saw me as threatened by the Dead Man, but the fates thought twice and gave that menace onto you. Back when I was but a dream in the mind of Death, this site was appointed as one of the places where I might die.”

  “To fall from Shinvat is to roast,” said Hasan.

  They carried us down into the fissure, dropped us on the rocks.

  Moreby released the safety catch on the rifle and stepped back.

  “Release the Greek and tie
him to that column.” He gestured with the weapon.

  They did this, binding my hands and feet securely. The rock was smooth, damp, killing without indication.

  They did the same to Hasan, about eight feet to my right.

  Moreby had set down the lantern so that it cast a yellow semicircle about us. The four Kouretes were demon statues at his side.

  He smiled. He leaned the rifle against the rocky wall behind him.

  “This is the Valley of Sleep,” he told us. “Those who sleep here do not awaken. It keeps the meat preserved, however, providing us against the lean years. Before we leave you, though—” His eyes turned to me. “Do you see where I have set the rifle?”

  I did not answer him.

  “I believe your entrails will stretch that far, Commissioner. At any rate, I intend to find out.” He drew a dagger from his belt and advanced upon me. The four half-men moved with him. “Who do you think has more guts?” he asked. “You or the Arab?”

  Neither of us replied.

  “You shall both get to see for yourselves,” he said through his teeth. “First you!”

  He jerked my shirt free and cut it down the front.

  He rotated the blade in a slow significant circle about two inches away from my stomach, all the while studying my face.

  “You are afraid,” he said. “Your face does not show it yet, but it will.”

  Then: “Look at me! I am going to put the blade in very slowly. I am going to dine on you one day. What do you think of that?”

  I laughed. It was suddenly worth laughing at.

  His face twisted, then it straightened into a momentary look of puzzlement.

  “Has the fear driven you mad, Commissioner?”

  “Feathers or lead?” I asked him.

  He knew what it meant. He started to say something, and then he heard a pebble click about twelve feet away. His head snapped in that direction.

  He spent the last second of his life screaming, as the force of Bortan’s leap pulped him against the ground, before his head was snatched from his shoulders.

  My hellhound had arrived.

  The Kouretes screamed, for his eyes are glowing coals and his teeth are buzzsaws. His head is as high above the ground as a tall man’s. Although they seized their blades and struck at him, his sides are as the sides of an armadillo. A quarter ton of dog, my Bortan . . . he is not exactly the kind Albert Payson Terhune wrote about.

  He worked for the better part of a minute, and when he was finished they were all in pieces and none of them alive.

  “What is it?” asked Hasan.

  “A puppy I found in a sack, washed up on the beach, too tough to drown—my dog,” said I, “Bortan.”

  There was a small gash in the softer part of his shoulder. He had not gotten it in the fight.

  “He sought us first in the village,” I said, “and they tried to stop him. Many Kouretes have died this day.”

  He trotted up and licked my face. He wagged his tail, made dog-noises, wriggled like a puppy, and ran in small circles. He sprang toward me and licked my face again. Then he was off cavorting once more, treading on pieces of Kouretes.

  “It is good for a man to have a dog,” said Hasan. “I have always been fond of dogs.”

  Bortan was sniffing him as he said it.

  “You’ve come back, you dirty old hound,” I told him. “Don’t you know that dogs are extinct?”

  He wagged his tail, came up to me again, licked my hand.

  “I’m sorry that I can’t scratch your ears. You know that I’d like to, though, don’t you?”

  He wagged his tail.

  I opened and closed my right hand within its bonds. I turned my head that way as I did it. Bortan watched, his nostrils moist and quivering.

  “Hands, Bortan. I need hands to free me. Hands to loosen my bonds. You must fetch them, Bortan, and bring them here.”

  He picked up an arm that was lying on the ground and he deposited it at my feet. He looked up then and wagged his tail.

  “No, Bortan. Live hands. Friendly hands. Hands to untie me. You understand, don’t you?”

  He licked my hand.

  “Go and find hands to free me. Still attached and living. The hands of friends. Now, quickly! Go!”

  He turned and walked away, paused, looked back once, then mounted the trail.

  “Does he understand?” asked Hasan.

  “I think so,” I told him. “His is not an ordinary dog brain, and he has had many many more years than even the lifetime of a man in which to learn understanding.”

  “Then let us hope he finds someone quickly, before we sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  We hung there and the night was cold.

  We waited for a long time. Finally, we lost track of time.

  Our muscles were cramped and aching. We were covered with the dried blood of countless little wounds. We were all over bruises. We were groggy from fatigue, from lack of sleep.

  We hung there, the ropes cutting into us.

  “Do you think they will make it to your village?”

  “We gave them a good start. I think they have a decent chance.”

  “It is always difficult to work with you, Karagee.”

  “I know. I have noticed this same thing myself.”

  “. . . Like the summer we rotted in the dungeons of Corsica.”

  “Aye.”

  “. . . Or our march to the Chicago Station, after we had lost all our equipment in Ohio.”

  “Yes, that was a bad year.”

  “You are always in trouble, though, Karagee. ‘Born to knot the tiger’s tail,’” he said; “that is the saying for people such as you. They are difficult to be with. Myself, I love the quiet and the shade, a book of poems, my pipe—”

  “Hush! I hear something!”

  There was a clatter of hooves.

  A satyr appeared beyond the cockeyed angle of the light from the fallen lantern. He moved nervously, his eyes going from me to Hasan and back again, and up, down, around, and past us.

  “Help us, little horny one,” said I, in Greek.

  He advanced carefully. He saw the blood, the mangled Kouretes.

  He turned as if to flee.

  “Come back! I need you! It is I, the player of the pipes.”

  He stopped and turned again, his nostrils quivering, flaring and falling. His pointed ears twitched.

  He came back, a pained expression on his near-human face as he passed through the place of gore.

  “The blade. At my feet,” I said, gesturing with my eyes. “Pick it up.”

  He did not seem to like the notion of touching anything man-made, especially a weapon.

  I whistled the last lines of my last tune.

  It’s late, it’s late, so late. . . .

  His eyes grew moist. He wiped at them with the backs of his shaggy wrists.

  “Pick up the blade and cut my bonds. Pick it up. —Not that way, you’ll cut yourself. The other end. —Yes.”

  He picked it up properly and looked at me. I moved my right hand.

  “The ropes. Cut them.”

  He did. It took him fifteen minutes and left me wearing a bracelet of blood. I had to keep moving my hand to keep him from slashing an artery. But he freed it and looked at me expectantly.

  “Now give me the knife and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  He placed the blade in my extended hand.

  I took it. Seconds later I was free. Then I freed Hasan.

  When I turned again the satyr was gone. I heard the sound of frantic hoofbeats in the distance.

  “The Devil has forgiven me,” said Hasan.

  We went far away from the Hot Spot as fast as we could, skirting the Kourete village and continuing northward until we came upon a trail that I
recognized as the road to Volos. Whether Bortan had found the satyr and had somehow conned him into coming to us, or whether the creature had spotted us himself and remembered me, was something of which I couldn’t be sure. Bortan had not returned, though, so I had a feeling it was the latter case.

  The closest friendly town was Volos, a probable twenty-five kilometers to the east. If Bortan had gone there, where he would be recognized by many of my relatives, it would still be a long while before his return. My sending him after help had been a last-ditch sort of thing. If he’d tried elsewhere than Volos, then I’d no idea when he’d be back. He’d find my trail though, and he’d follow it again. We pushed on, putting as much road as possible behind us.

  After about ten kilos we were staggering. We knew that we couldn’t make it much further without rest, so we kept our eyes open for a possible safe sleep-site.

  Finally, I recognized a steep, rocky hill where I had herded sheep as a boy. The small shepherd’s cave, three-quarters of the way up the slope, was dry and vacant. The wooden façade that faced it was fallen to decay, but it still functioned.

  We pulled some clean grass for bedding, secured the door, and stretched out within. In a moment, Hasan was snoring. My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures—a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when you are not, sex, a cigarette after many days without one—there is none of them can compare with sleep.

  Sleep is best. . . .

  I might say that if our party had taken the long way from Lamia to Volos—the coastal road—the whole thing might never have happened the way that it did, and Phil might be alive today. But I can’t really judge all that occurred in this case; even now, looking back, I can’t say how I’d rearrange events if it was all to be done over again. The forces of final disruption were already goose-stepping amidst the ruins, arms upraised. . . .

  We made it to Volos the following afternoon, and on up Mount Pelion to Portaria. Across a deep ravine lay Makrynitsa.

  We crossed over and found the others.

  Phil had guided them to Makrynitsa, asked for a bottle of wine and his copy of Prometheus Unbound, and had sat up with the two, well into the evening.