by Jeff Sutton
For a long moment the beast and its rider, pinned against the sky, remained as motionless as statues. The rider's eyes were fastened on the knoll ahead. Suddenly his hands came up, holding a rifle. Before Jedro could comprehend what was happening, the rider whipped the weapon up, sighted along the dark barrel and fired; a lance of brilliant flame leaped out from the bore.
Jedro twisted around wildly. Clement suddenly had broken his stride.
Faltering, he pulled his body erect and gazed upward into the yellow-blue sky for a long moment before he slowly toppled forward, pitching face downward to the dusty trail.
Mr. Clement! Jedro screamed silently, feeling a coldness that he felt certain must be the touch of death. He twisted back. The Tattooed Man, calmly replacing the weapon in its scabbard, started Page 11
the relk down the slope. Jedro watched him ride to the fallen man.
Briefly looking down at Clement, The Tattooed Man dismounted. He carefully searched the dead man's pockets, then removed and searched his shoes. After that he pried open the jaws to examine the mouth before inspecting the rest of the body.
He's after the memory stone! The sudden insight jolted Jedro. Clenching the stone, he felt its warmth. If The Tattooed Man discovered him, he'd throw it away. He'd never let him get it.
Never, never. He made the vow fiercely.
The Tattooed Man finally picked up Clement's body and slung it across the relk, then mounted and kicked his heels against the animal's ribs. The
relk swung around and started back along the trail.
Jedro dropped lower behind the clump, scarcely daring to breathe. When finally he rose, there was neither sign of the relk, its tattooed rider, nor of the gaunt man he'd known so briefly. For one short moment he thought it a crazy dream; but then he knew it wasn't.
The warm stone clenched in his fist told him that.
Wrapped in the single thin blanket that Krant grudgingly had supplied him, Jedro gazed upward into the star-spattered sky. Off to one side, the small red eye of Glost winked at him. His thoughts were on the memory stone.
Clenched in his hand, the stone emitted a warmth that had moved up along his arm, and now permeated his whole body. Prickling sensations played along his nerve trunks. Ordinarily quite cold and lusterless, the stone appeared like an ordinary pebble until he touched it; then the heat would come, the eerie glow, and the small violet flames would dance. What was there about the stone that his touch could change it so? What was its purpose? Memory, the gaunt man had said, but he couldn't see the connection between that and the stone. He often pondered the baffling questions, just as he pondered the enigma of Mr. Clement.
Mr. Clement -- he let the name seep through his mind. Mr. Clement striding down from the hills, his long white hair rippling in the wind; Mr.
Clement telling him that he had the power. What power? The gaunt man hadn't said. Half promise, half warning, his words had been wrapped in a strange wistfulness.
As suddenly as he had appeared, Mr. Clement had hurried away. Tall and gaunt against the late afternoon sky, he had rushed to meet the very death he had predicted. He had named both time and place, even the exact manner of his death, and by whose hand. That had been frightening.
The Tattooed Man! Jedro shuddered. Whenever he thought of Mr. Clement, which was often, he thought of The Tattooed Man. Vision of the hideously patterned face with its great curving beak of a nose filled him with awe and dread. Had The Tattooed Man, like Mr. Clement, come from Earth? Why had he killed Mr. Clement? To get the stone; there could be no other answer. What magic, then, had the stone that it could lead to murder? The magic of memory, Mr. Clement had said. That was quite perplexing.
Strangest of all, he decided, was how Mr. Clement had known the exact time and place of his death. Death is a great wind that blows through the universe; it is the hunter of life -- the gaunt man's words came back. Death has a feel, taste, sound, a smell, but most of all it's a Vision --
he'd also said that.
Jedro debated the statements. If they were right, why couldn't he sense death? Trees, plants, animals, and insects were dying all around him; death was a constant in the Ullan Hills, yet he had never sensed it. Perhaps, as Mr.
Clement had said, death was a host who spoke only to his guests. Jedro wondered if it was like his knowing when it was going to rain.
He would see The Tattooed Man again -- Mr. Clement had warned him of that. The knowledge was frightening. Perhaps he was still hiding somewhere nearby, watching, trying to discover what Mr. Clement had done with the memory stone. Yet there was no use trying to run; the encounter Page 12
was bound to come. He regarded it fatalistically. But no matter what happened, he wouldn't give up the stone.
Sensing its warmth, he fell asleep.
Summer was drawing to a close when Jedro had the dream. It came during a crisp night that heralded a change of season.
Floating in a black sky, he saw the rock tumbling toward him. A distant shadow moving against the stars, it grew larger and larger. Off to one side
gleamed a gigantic sphere with four minute spheres clustered randomly around it. Far beyond, thin, shimmery bands encircled a magnificent star.
The tumbling rock rushed toward him. Vast and fearsome, it grew in his vision, obliterating the stars. Larger, larger, larger...Was he rushing toward it or was it rushing toward him? Watching apprehensively, he was relieved to realize that it would sweep past beneath him. As it hurtled underfoot, he saw that it was far larger than he first had supposed. A tangle of black spires jutting outward against the sky, the ebon rock gleamed with the light of a distant golden sun that he knew was not Klore.
He was falling, hurtling downward toward the black mass below, faster and faster and faster. He tried to scream but no sound came. Suddenly his body leveled off racing between the towering walls of a black canyon. Far ahead he glimpsed a silvery sphere nestled at the base of a sheer cliff.
He was floating gently above the sphere. Huge walls rose around him, so close that the firmament appeared as a thin swath far above him. Then, magically, he was looking through the sphere's metallic surface at a strange oblong box that rested in the center of a small compartment. A clutter of tubes penetrated the box at each end.
The lid swung open and he stared down at the pale, patrician face of an elderly man. Like Mr.
Clement, he had hair that was long and white, but there all resemblance between them ended.
This face held none of the gauntness, none of the craggy lines. Smooth and finely textured, it was gentle in repose.
The eyes snapped open. Clear and blue, they regarded him steadily. The lips moved.
"I have been waiting," said the man in the oblong box.
Jedro screamed.
He jerked to wakefulness, trembling, feeling the wild beat of his heart.
The man in the oblong box! Starting to leap to his feet, he remembered where he was and subsided back into the tall panda grass. For a long moment he lay still, his eyes fixed on the blue-black sky. Gradually his heartbeat quieted and his trembling passed. It was then that he became aware that he was clutching the memory stone; he could feel its heat pulsing upward through his body. He looked at the stone in the darkness, marveling at the dance of its violet flame, then thrust it back into his pocket.
Who was the man in the oblong box? What strange world had he seen tumbling through that black and alien space? Certainly it was a world far different from Doorn. It had held no grass, no trees, no sign of life, but only the terrible starkness of twisted rock -- a world that tumbled in solitude under a frightening sky.
A different sun! He had seen that, too. Small and far away, its golden beams had scarcely been more than pale shadows where they touched the rock world's grotesque spires. Not radiantly yellow like Klore, nor a dusky orange like Bergon, it had been a dismal sun, peering out on the rock world as if from a cave in the sky. And yet...He groped at the elusive sense of familiarity. A golden sun. Earth's sun, they said, was gold
en.
But it was all a dream, nothing more. He resolved that firmly. Yet try as he would, he could never quite forget that black world tumbling through space, nor the man in the oblong box.
Especially not the man in the oblong box.
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Jedro never told Ramsig about his dream. Although on the verge of revealing it several times, he abruptly had clamped his lips. If he told
Ramsig about the dream, he would have to tell him about the stone, for he was certain that the two were related. Then Ramsig would want to see the stone. He couldn't allow that. In the end, he kept his dream to himself.
The rains came, warm at first, followed by a cold front that moved in from the north. The chill caused Jedro's teeth to chatter. When the leaves on
the otog trees yellowed and began to fall, he knew that autumn was racing to a close. He hated to see the season end, for then he would have to return to the dilapidated ranch house. Sharing the winter with the Krants would be the most miserable of all.
At times, alone in the starry night, he could understand why Ramsig had chosen his solitary life.
A man could think in the Ullan Hills. And yet, as often as not, his thoughts skittered and darted through his mind with incomprehensible urgency. Vague, half-formed thoughts that he could never quite manage to grasp long enough to examine. But it hadn't always been that way. The urgency, he was certain, was related to Mr. Clement and the memory stone. To The Tattooed Man.
And to the man in the oblong box.
Early one afternoon he was dismayed to see Mr. Krant riding toward him on a relk. As the rancher drew closer, Jedro saw that the animal was half-starved, its body appearing scarcely more than a hide-covered bag of bones. He regarded the relk sorrowfully.
Krant pulled the animal up short and barked, "Bring in the gran. They go to market tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Jedro was appalled. "I can't get them there that soon."
"Start driving them now, drive all night," snapped Krant. "You have to be there by sunup so we can cut the breeders from the flock."
"I'll try," he offered.
"You'd better do better than that." As the relk pressed forward to nuzzle Jedro's cheek, Krant kicked it brutally in the ribs. The animal reared back, its eyes rolling wildly.
"You're hurting it," shouted Jedro.
"I'll kill it," raged Krant. Jerking the relk's head around, he galloped back down the slope. Jedro watched him grow small in the distance and finally disappear around a bend. He stooped and scratched a gran behind the ear, sorrowful that the sleek animals had to die. In many respects he felt even closer to them than he did to Ramsig. It was a matter of understanding them, he reflected. And they understood him. He could see it in their eyes, by the way they nuzzled him and pressed close around him in the dark of night. But it wasn't only the gran. The small furry creatures that lived in the woods came to nibble food from his hand. So did the birds. Such understandings didn't require words.
That night, while plodding through the darkness with the gran, he remembered Ramsig's words.
Perhaps he could get a job in town. But was he old enough? And he knew so little. Perhaps next year, he decided wretchedly.
The following afternoon, watching the gran wagons start back along the dusty road, he felt sad.
Now he would be alone with the Krants. The thought was almost more than he could bear.
Krant came up behind him. "Stop daydreaming," he snarled, "there's work to be done."
Jedro swung around, suddenly angry. "No," he said.
"What do you mean, no?" Krant's face flamed.
"I'm leaving."
"After all I've done for you?" roared the rancher. "Come here, you ungrateful wretch." His arm shot out, but Jedro had already leaped back.
"You can't make me stay," he shouted.
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"Can't I?" As Krant lunged toward him, Jedro struck out blindly, his fist smashing against the rancher's nose. Krant halted and threw a hand to his face, then brought it away covered with blood. The shadow of fear flitted across his face.
Jedro grinned, suddenly jubilant. "That's for all the beatings," he said. Whirling, he raced down the road after the gran wagons. He was leaving, would never see the Krants again! His joy was dimmed by the thought that
neither would he see the relks again.
Reaching the rear wagon, he grasped the tailgate and swung aboard.
Looking back, he saw Krant standing dejectedly at the same spot. Then the wagon train went around a bend.
Jedro settled down among the animals, absently scratching the nearest one behind the ear.
"You've got company, boy," he whispered. The gran bleated and nuzzled his cheek. Jedro gazed up into the yellow-blue sky and laughed.
He didn't know where he was going, but he was going.
3
JEDRO SAW THE CARNIVAL in the late evening.
Planted in the fields at the edge of a small town named New Chicago, its blaze of light was visible for miles around. One brilliant beam that stabbed toward the top of the sky and whirled around and around drew him as irresistibly as a moth toward a flame.
A carnival! The magic of it filled his mind. As he drew nearer, the discordant wail of music reached his ears, rousing his excitement to fever pitch. A stone man! A human fish! A snake woman! Little people who were scarcely as high as his hip and a man who was nine feet tall! A boy in Little
Paris had told him all about it. His mind awhirl with all the marvelous things he'd heard, he hastened toward the glowing lights.
"It's from Earth," the boy had told him.
"The home world?" Jedro was startled.
"It was the biggest show there," the other explained. "The signs said so." He told Jedro about the clowns, rope walkers, jugglers, and a man who ate fire. There was a ferocious animal called a lion "The King of the Beasts," he said -- and an old woman who looked into a crystal ball and told your fortune.
He eagerly described the merry-go-round, roller caster, sky wheel, the small aircars on cables that whirled you around so fast that the world became a blur. Other cars carried you through dark tunnels where luminescent ghosts and skeletons dangled from the walls.
But Jedro scarcely heard that part. Earth! The carnival had come from there! All at once the indecision and bewilderment he'd known since reaching
Little Paris vanished; suddenly he realized exactly what he had to do. He'd get a job with the carnival and go with it when it returned to Earth. Hadn't Mr. Clement promised him that he'd go to Earth? While he hadn't mentioned the carnival, he'd probably had it in mind. It was the kind of thing that a man who could predict his own death would know.
"Where's the carnival now?" he asked anxiously.
"It went to New Chicago."
"Where's that?"
"The next town." The boy pointed the way.
The journey had taken Jedro five days. Aside from a few short rides hitched on relk-drawn wagons, he'd tramped every foot of the dusty road.
Feasting on wild berries and otog nuts, he'd slept in the fields. But the discomforts were as nothing compared to the reward he envisaged. Earth! His heart sang with every step.
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As he drew near the entrance, his eyes fastened on a crowded street lined with brilliantly lighted booths. A huge banner stretched overhead, dancing in the wind. DR. FAUST'S MAGIC
CARNIVAL -- he drank in the words eagerly. Smaller lettering underneath read: BIGGEST
SHOW IN THE UNIVERSE!
The boy in Little Paris had been right, he thought fiercely. His eyes glowed. Lights, music, movement, signs -- the bombardment of his senses filled him with awe. Men and women in small booths called and gestured to the passersby, promising rich prizes for breaking balloons with darts or shooting
down toy animals that leaped and raced across the backgrounds. Most of the booths were jammed with eager customers.
Jedro's eyes darted this way and that.
A huge wheel that went around
and around carried people in little buckets high into the sky.
Another wheel that lay on its side under a striped canopy -- merry-go-round, the sign called it --
carried its riders on strange make-believe animals that jumped up and down as the wheel spun to the sound of raucous music. Small wagons linked together disappeared into a dark cave; when they reappeared at the far side, their riders, mostly young couples, were flushed and merry.
Many of the girls were giggling.
The aroma of frying foods assailed his nostrils, bringing sharp hunger pangs. Even though he was stuffed with wild berries and otog nuts, his mouth watered. HAMBURGERS, HOTDOGS, POPCORN, COLD DRINKS signs beckoned him from a score of places. Again he felt the strange prickling of memory; he could all but recall the taste of such things.
Sniffing, he realized that the most delicious aroma came from the black griddles where the hamburgers were frying. He hurried on to escape the sudden craving.
THE STONE MAN, THE SNAKE WOMAN, THE FIRE EATER -- he gazed wonderingly at the colorful pictures that accompanied the signs. Suddenly his eyes lit on a gaudy poster that proclaimed: STRONGEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE. A picture depicted a brute-faced man, draped in an animal skin, lifting a huge weight.
Across the bottom of the sign, in big block letters, was the name: THE
STRANGLER.
Jedro flexed his arm, eyeing his bicep surreptitiously; it was nothing like that of the man on the poster. Clenching the memory stone, he wished he had the money to go inside. But he would have when he got a job. Then he'd go into every booth and buy a hamburger from every stand along the way.
The end of the sawdust road was blocked by a huge plastic tent decorated in red and white stripes. A barker -- as Jedro soon learned such men were called -- stood on a platform in front of the main entrance, a flaming torch on either side of him.
"Come in, come in," he cried. His voice rang with a singsong note. "See Earth's greatest clowns, trick riders, rope walkers." His hands made sweeping gestures toward a booth where a woman was selling tickets. "See Jason tame the lions, the most fierce animals in the entire universe! Positively thrilling, ladies and gentlemen. Come in, come in."