Land Beyond the Map

IX

Bemused, Crane held up a hand, trying to shield his face from the prying light, caught off balance.

“Don’t waste my time, Crane. The map, hand it over. And the Amullieh. Be quick about it.”

“I don’t know anything about the map — or this Amullieh thing you mentioned.”

McArdle showed only as a dark shadow behind the torch glow; there was less even of him visible than when Crane had seen him on the rainslicked Belfast street asking his way to the Queen’s Bridge. But that grating, ear-serrating voice was the same.

“The Amullieh you broke from my wrist when your girl friend hit me… And don’t think I’ve forgotten that!”

“The chain — You mean the chain. I’d forgotten about that…” Crane dug it out of his pocket, feeling the leather map wallet brush against his fingers. His hand snagged the chain and he dragged quickly upwards so that McArdle would not suspect anything else of value lay in that pocket. “Here.”

As McArdle reached forward hungrily with an empty hand, and the torch splashed pallid light over the glinting length of chain between Crane’s fingers, Crane slashed viciously with his other hand at the light, knocked the torch spinning away. A chance; but he doubted if McArdle was three-handed.

Stars and volcanic explosions burst luridly in Crane’s head. He staggered back, arms upflung, tripping, as McArdle leaped forward to strike again.

“Try to be clever, would you, Crane? I may have put my gun away; but I don’t need a gun to deal with a weakling like you.”

Again the bunched fist holding the golden chain swung towards Crane. He ducked desperately, sought to grapple with McArdle. Another blow knocked him down and blackness rimmed with red wavered like an aurora borealis over his eyes. He gasped once for breath, felt McArdle’s fingers slide into his pocket, take the map, gasped again, and then gasped no more as McArdle slammed one last blow home.

He heard that grating voice laughing, heard McArdle say: “I have the map! The map! I have it! At last! At last!”

Holding his breath, eyes shut, feeling the road hard under him, Crane made his last effort. McArdle must be feverishly opening the wallet, unwrapping the wax paper, taking out the map. The man had to be sure he had the prize safely. So his attention would be fully engrossed. Crane pushed with his legs, rolled over, slid off the road and fell sprawling in the paling darkness into the ditch at the bottom of a ten-foot slope.

A small black-shadowed bush grew from the side of the ditch three yards away, just visible in the growing light. Crane tensed, about to wriggle for its cover.

The revolver above him spat flame, once, twice. Crane heard the bullets whicker into the bush, the crack as one hit a branch. He screamed as though in mortal agony.

“That’s settled you, Crane! Good riddance. And now… Now to return to my kingdom!”

McArdle’s harsh footsteps on the road above faded back — away from the direction of the Map Country.

Crane took a deep dragging breath. He was shaking. So McArdle had taken the dark shadow of the bush for him and had shot to kill. But Crane was still alive — bruised and shocked, but alive.

Alive without the torn map that was the passport and key into the Map Country where Polly had been taken captive by the living lozenges of light. Crane pushed up onto a knee, thrust down with a hand, stood up with his feet in water. He felt chilled to the marrow.

McArdle had gone back away from the Map Country; that could only mean he was going for his car; he had been driving the car and had stopped and walked back in a quiet detour and had taken Crane, lost in memories, completely by surprise. Crane felt a fool. But he had to get that map back, or, failing that, go with McArdle into the Map Country. He scrambled along the ditch until the bank dipped a little, climbed up broken turfs and muddy hollows, crept cautiously out onto the road.

The true dawn could be only minutes away. He had to reach the car and McArdle before the sun speared above the horizon and revealed him. McArdle would kill him, out here on this lonely bogland road, without compunction.

McArdle’s car still faced towards Omagh as Crane, back in the ditch, crept level with it. McArdle sat behind the wheel and his shadowed silhouette against the reflected glow from the lights showed as an evil puppet-figure. The engine revved hard, reverse clashed excruciatingly and the car inched back. McArdle was afraid of running his wheels into the ditch. Crane reached the conclusion the man was a bad driver.

As the boot edged back over the ditch with the car jerking along as though on spring jacks instead of wheels, Crane slithered up out of the ditch on the near side, the blind spot, and reached for the rear door handle. As the car jerked, jumped, and then, as McArdle found bottom, moved forward, Crane opened the door with a single motion and bundled inside.

The car stopped.

“What’s going on?” demanded McArdle. He looked back over his shoulder and now the light was sufficient for them to see each other’s faces clearly at that short distance.

That fierce jut of jaw, that livid gash of mouth Crane had glimpsed beneath the downdrawn hat in Belfast had not belied the lean, sardonic, satanic look of the man. Heavy black eyebrows met over a long thin nose. Fierce, evil and utterly ruthless, McArdle stared at Crane, his brilliant eyes so dark they appeared black pinpoints of hate.

“You fool! Why follow me here when I failed to kill you!” McArdle’s throaty rasp held only contempt and impatience. He wanted to get on, to get into the Map Country. “You’ve made so many mistakes, Crane… But this is your last.” The revolver barrel snouted up over the back of the seat.

Calmly, quietly, Crane showed McArdle the grenade.

He held it in his hand, the pin still between !is teeth, and the lever nuzzled his palm like a dog’s nose.

Crane spat out the pin.

“You know what this is, McArdle?” he said joyfully, his teeth barely opening to let the words bite out. “A grenade. You shoot me, my hand releases the lever and — blooey! Your head will be blown to mush.”

“You wouldn’t dare! What about you…?”

“Don’t worry about me, McArdle. Worry about yourself. Think of your face hanging in shreds, your eyeballs dangling. Think of your brains spattered against the windshield… Go on, man… think!”

“No… No, Crane… I won’t shoot…” McArdle’s fears were, Crane realized with an insight he found curious, directed more towards preserving his life for a purpose rather than from terror of being blown up.

“You won’t shoot. That’s nice… Very nice…”

“But I won’t give you the map. And you can’t force me.”

“Just drive on, McArdle. Just drive on into the Map Country. That’s all I want.”

McArdle’s sigh of relief sounded genuine. He put the gun down on the seat beside him. Then he said: “Be careful with that grenade. It’s a primitive weapon.”

“Sure it’s primitive. And you know what they say about primitive weapons. They’re dangerous. Drive!”

The car started, jerkily, and McArdle crashed the gears in a way that would have set Polly’s teeth on edge.

“And primitive means of conveyance like this car — they’re dangerous too!” McArdle said savagely. He hadn’t liked that grenade shoved under his ear one little bit.

“This is a pretty high-class piece of automobile merchandise,” Crane said mildly. “It’s only dangerous when there’s a dangerous jerk behind the wheel.”

“Primitive,” McArdle said explosively. “Cheap internal combustion engine spewing filthy fumes, burning up gasoline, the precious heritage of a planet, in extravagant ignorance— not that I care about the way you run your world.” A slow, vicious smile curved his thin lips. He had thought of something that pleased him. “But you’re going into my world, aren’t you, Crane? You’re never going to see your own world again. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“You just keep your mind on driving this primitive conveyance, McArdle. If you tip us over into the ditch I’m likely to let go of this grenade…”

“I’m doing my best,” McArdle fairly snarled back. “How would you make out driving a Roman chariot? Hey?”

“You have a point there.” Crane could clinically recognize the reasons behind this fresh attitude he had fallen into. And not so fresh either, really. He had at last faced up to the unpleasant realization that he had to act as his instincts had once dictated, as he had acted habitually, the old Roland Crane, the one he thought he had buried when he’d shucked off the uniform and the three pips and the submachine gun and the parade-ground voice. And, of course, he was enjoying it all. He was luxuriating in this enforced return to violence. He enjoyed it and he loathed himself for enjoying it, and he thought of Polly and the clanking monster tanks and the lozenges of light and of McArdle and he felt grimly that, unpleasant though it may be, he had a damn good right to enjoy it.

“You seem to know a good bit about the Map Country, McArdle. Suppose you tell me—”

“The Map Country?”

“Oh. You probably don’t call it that. But you know what I mean. What’s your big interest in the place?”

“My business. I tried to warn you, Crane. I told you no good would come if you meddled and went after the map—”

“What are you after, McArdle? Money? Loot? Power?”

McArdle did not exactly laugh; the sound was a harsh, grating, surging of his voice, a serrated bubble of sound in the car. “I belong in what you call the Map Country, Crane. I know it. I understand it. And — / can tame it!”

Fog wreathed outside now, breaking up the silver pre-dawn light, speeding past the windows, floating in streaks up the windshield, gradually shutting down. McArdle slowed the car. “We’re going in, Crane. Sure you don’t want to get out?”

“You can mock till you burst a blood-vessel, McArdle. What’s this about belonging in the Map Country?”

The car crawled through the fog and with half an eye Crane peered ahead, waiting for that coiling chiaroscuro of rippling color to reveal the entrance to the Map Country. The last time he had sat like this Polly had been driving.

McArdle’s ripsaw voice grated: “What happened to your girl friend, Crane? Lose her, did you? Leave her behind in the Map Country? Tasty offering to the Wardens?”

“Shut your filthy mouth!” blazed Crane. Then: “Wardens? What are they?”

“If you went through the veil you’d meet them. They keep the road clean of vermin.”

“You mean the tanks. Well, I figured that’s what they were for. If you know so much tell me what this Amullieh is.”

“You carried it with you and you came out. You’re not carrying it now and you won’t come out. You’ll be taken up by the Loti—” Sadistic satisfaction purred in McArdle’s voice and a sliver of light from the sunshine ahead breaking through fog glanced from the line of his jaw.

“An amulet against the Loti, huh?” said Crane. “Well, if nothing else we’re learning a few brand names. So that’s why they dropped me as though I was poisoned bait. I’d like to know how you came by that golden chain…”

“I made it.” Light from ahead aureoled McArdle’s head and shoulders hunched in the driving seat; to Crane that halo personified the devil, gave a tangible form to McArdle’s impression of supernatural evil. For McArdle was evil. And all the cozy chats in a car in the world — or in the Map Country — wouldn’t change that.

“So you made it. Bully for you.” Light punched in through the car windows and Crane saw the tooled red leather case with the gilt locks lying on the floor at his feet. With his left hand he snapped the locks, lifted the lid. He whistled.

“They’re pretty, McArdle. Make those, too?”

“Yes. I had to use terrestrial techniques to contain my knowledge and the result is clumsy—”

“Don’t do yourself dirt, McArdle. Let me do it for you.”

Crane bent watchfully and lifted one of the guns from the case. He could see what McArdle meant about alien knowledge and Earthly techniques of manufacture; the gun looked like a high-velocity express rifle, but the magazine and breech area bulked more heavily and the telescopic sights squatted integrally, giving the rifle a hard, alien look of power.

“Careful how you handle that!” McArdle spoke sharply and his eyes flicked back to the grenade clutched in Crane’s right hand. But he meant the rifle.

Examination over, Crane put the rifle on the seat. “I think I could use it,” he said quietly.

“But you’ve no conception of its power! A shell from that rifle holds twenty times the explosive force of that grenade in your hand!”

“And you had to make it and bring it along — for the Wardens. Thoughtful.”

Around them lay the Map Country, shining and tranquil under the sun. The white road curved dustily away into the gentle folds of grass and the black wrecks of Colla’s truck and the Austin looked like intruders. The two wrecked tanks were gone.

“Tidy around here,” said Crane, “with their own rubbish. But they leave outsiders’ junk lying where it falls.” This time the tension in him drained at once as he went through into the Map Country. This time he was the old Roland Crane he had tried so hard to bury — and, with the need of the moment making its demands, had so signally failed to dispose of. He could relish using McArdle’s rifle on a clanking monster.

The road lurched. A trembling ripple ran through the solid earth. Trees swayed in a breathless hush.

McArdle proved he was no driver — the car skittered to the offside of the road, the wheel was flung over far too hard in panic correction, and the car flipped neatly off the road and into a line of marching bushes fleeing from the earthly convulsions.

Silver needles tapped the body. The car groaned on its springs and moved again — sideways.

“Hold on to that grenade, Crane! For pity’s sake!”

“What do you know of pity?” grunted Crane; but he picked up the pin and shoved it back. At that, McArdle’s rifle would be more handy. He picked it up and put the muzzle to McArdle’s neck, under the ear.

“Get this heap back on the road. Surely you’re not scared of a rolling road and a moving bush? Get with it!”

As the car pursued its erratic way along the road Crane was acutely conscious of where he was and who he was with. This recurrence of events seemed to him a nightmare repetition of normalcy; he half-expected any moment to awake and find Polly sitting at the wheel.

The road dipped and soon they were driving through a narrow gorge with beetle-browed cliffs glowering down on them. Strange animal shapes hopped and skittered about the rocks. Unspoken between the two men lay the compact that they were driving to the distant city — that fiery Gehenna of ice and flame Crane -had only partially scrutinized from his hilltop. There, if anywhere in this chaotic other-place, lay the answers and Polly and Allan Gould.

“You claim to be able to tame this place,” Crane said, nodding through the screen. “You’re not doing much of a job. Look.” In molten rock the cliffs fell away, pouring in liquid cascades of fire away into bottomless depths. Fumes rose and stank in the air. And the car drove forward into a wide plain that might have been plucked straight from Central Africa. “The place changes so fast that if you had to dress for climate you’d be forever in your underwear.”

“Not always, Crane. This place is ruled by chaos, and sometimes a kind of quietness descends even in the midst of chaos. But the land is worse than I could have imagined. The Loti are losing their battle.” The depths of hatred in McArdle’s voice repelled Crane with the instinctive revulsion from the debased and debauched. “I knew they would never succeed! I told them! I warned them! But they would not listen — only a few, very few! But now my time has come! I, Trangor, will be master!”

Listening to McArdle’s rantings, Crane began to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. All the crazy events began to slip into shape. He had not failed to notice the absence of the tanks of the road. When that distant prospect of fire and beauty and terror appeared on the horizon he leaned forward in the back of the car and the expectation of great deeds set an icy thrill down his spine. The first lozenge of living light swooped down on the car as they breasted the last rise. McArdle chuckled his retching cough of laughter.

“Much good will it do the Loti! With the Amullieh I am invincible!”

Crane forebore to remind him that the Amullieh made Crane invincible, too — while he remained in the car.

Two other Loti gathered, their light playing across the road and car, casting disturbing shadows, dancing and pirouetting from side to side. Crane felt he had just about half the mystery solved now; but he dearly wanted to know the rest. He tried to estimate just how much of that golden-linked Amullieh he had broken off in his pocket when returning the map to McArdle; two links and a medallion, perhaps. Would that be enough to protect him from the Loti? Would it destroy the power of the Amullieh altogether?

Either way, McArdle was coming in for a nasty shock when they reached the city and their ways parted.

And in all that long journey they had seen not one clanking monster, not one tank, not one Warden.

The Loti clustered now, shining, casting wavering shadows that ran every which way like deformed dwarfs. The car reached the top of the rise and began to run downhill. Its engine stopped. The road rose a little, not much, just a gentle hump; but that slight undulation was enough to halt the car’s forward progress. With a quiet sigh the car stopped.

“What are you waiting for, McArdle? Start her up. I want to see inside that city.”

“The Loti have stopped the engine. It’s easy enough. With such a primitive device little is necessary to derange it.” McArdle opened the door. “We are within range of their instruments, now. I pity you, little Earthman.”

“If we have to get this near before they can stop our socalled primitive engine they can’t be so formidable.” But Crane knew he was puffing air even as he spoke. He, too, alighted from the car and his grip on the rifle tightened.

On McArdle’s face grew a ghostly look of unendurable longing as he stared at the clustered, swaying lozenges of light. He half-raised a hand and then let it drop to his side with a gesture of renunciation. He turned to Crane and in his eyes the glitter of unslaked ambition revealed what Crane could only believe to be the true man.

“Go on, Crane. Walk down to the city and knock upon the door. For your woman is there. The Loti have taken her as they have taken much else and she is there, waiting for you. Why do you hesitate? What pales your cheek? Has fear touched you too deeply?”

“And when I walk down there — as I am surely going to do — what is to prevent you from shooting me in the back?” Crane lifted the rifle until the muzzle centered blackly upon McArdle.

“You won’t shoot me, Crane. Not defenselessly like this. And I won’t shoot you. For you will begin my work for me. You will open the doors, break down the gates. The weaklings who cower in the city can be conquered by you — for met Go, Crane. Go and rescue your woman — and then seek to flee, for I am coming to take my own and on this planet nothing will stir but by my will. Go!”

Crane hesitated only for a moment, caught in the jeweled snare of the moment and the situation. He could not shoot down this man — if man he truly was — in cold blood. So he began to walk down the road, keeping an eye on McArdle, the rifle ready to lift and fire the moment McArdle brought out his own weapon, conscious of the strange truce of hatred between them. Slowly and casual seeming, McArdle walked around the car. He vanished from Crane’s sight. Instinctive reflex sent Crane into the ditch. He waited, the rifle thrust forward, aimed at the car. He thought he caught a glimpse of movement through the windows, and then he saw McArdle walking steadily away from the car, away from the road, at right angles to it, heading out into the shifting perspectives of the untamed Map Country.

On McArdle’s back was strapped a large box from which a whip aerial sprouted like those aerials rising from the backs of the tanks, under his arm he carried the twin rifle to the one held by Crane, and he marched as though imbued with a purpose that had fired his flinty heart.

Crane watched him go, even then undecided whether or not to pump a shot after him. But the man had, looking back, merely offered to warn him and had taken the map at the point of a gun — then Crane remembered that callous shot at the bush in the ditch and his finger tightened on the trigger. But he let McArdle go. The man — if man he was — had been right. Crane couldn’t shoot a defenseless man in the back when there appeared no need. Then McArdle disappeared behind a tree that lurched forward on its insensate line of march.