Nightmare Journey

26

Merka Shanly contrived to be in a public place — seated in the enclave's senso-parlor, experiencing a prewar emotion film-when the official announcement was made.

The sound, smell and tactile sensations faded.

Viewers grumbled, looked questioningly at those seated beneath the senso-helmets on either side.

The moving colors on the screen, shapeless, became even more so, lost all psychological resemblance to the emotions of the film, faded slowly out until the screen was white, blank.

A moment later the enclave's public address system was spliced into the parlor's broadcast facilities, as it reached every Pure in the fortress no matter where he was or what he was doing.

The audience quieted.

The square, sober face of Kitson Helger, enclave news promoter, flashed onto the screen in the front of the parlor. His eyes were darkly ringed, and his lips were pale and trembling. He said, “Little more than an hour ago our General put through an emergency call to Dr. Danfrey, ordering him to the Military Suite. Upon arrival Dr. Danfrey discovered our General was experiencing a series of severe heart palpitations. Despite all that Dr. Danfrey could do, our General passed away fifteen minutes ago. Until the Committee on Leadership elects a replacement Preakness Bay Enclave is without a guiding light. Services of mourning are being held in all enclave chapels.”

The sober face evaporated.

Merka Shanly, wearing a mask of grief, raced up the aisle of the parlor, pushed through its exit doors.

The Pures in the parlor watched her leave. There was no one in Preakness Bay Enclave who did not know that she had been the General's mate for more than three months, longer than any woman before her.

In the corridors she passed other Pures, who tried to stop her and offer their condolences. She pushed past them, fighting to hold onto her grief-stricken expression, trying not to crack open before them.

She stepped into the lift, dropped, was caught in the beam, floated swiftly upward until she called out the number of the floor she wanted. The lift delivered her. She stepped out and hurried down the main hall of the governmental level, toward the Military Suite.

The door opened at her command, closed behind her.

She walked across the foyer, through the main lounge, through the library and into the master bedroom.

“So far?” she asked.

Dr. Tokel Danfrey looked up, nodded, and turned back to the corpse on the bed. “Were you seen?”

“For the past two hours,” she affirmed.

“I've fed the news to Hegler, and I saw him deliver it correctly. Now it's up to you, Merka, to keep the riff-raff out of here.”

“Will do,” she said.

She looked once at the bed, saw the gaping wound in the dead General's neck, the blood spilled all over the white bedclothes.

She had washed her hands thoroughly, three hours ago, just after she had murdered him. Still, she looked at her pale fingers, at the transparent nails, as if they held some crimson taint that would betray her.

The main door to the suite reported the presence of several governmental officials.

“Don't let them in here!” Dr. Danfrey said. He was busy with his surgical tools, cutting the body into disposable sections.

She nodded, left the bedroom, closed the door.

“Let them in,” she told the suite monitor when she had reached the main lounge.

It obeyed, sliding the door wide.

Four men entered, one fully as tall as the General, the other three all somewhat shorter than Merka Shanly herself. The tallest was Ober Iswan, Chairman of the Committee on Leadership. He was a stern man, not only pious in his devotion to Lady Nature, but fanatically zealous. He observed feast days and fasts as few other enclave Pures did. She supposed he was to be admired for that.

Ober Iswan said, “ I want to see our General' s body.” He did not speak out of suspicion, but out of deep emotional attachment to the dead man. They had been friends, of a sort.

“The doctor's with him — with it,” she said. “He's performing an immediate autopsy.”

Iswan looked surprised. “Here — not in the medical labs?”

“He thinks there was something distinctly odd about the General's demise, perhaps some bacterial infection. If the enclave has been contaminated by one of the Ruiner's microorganisms, it is best that we find out as soon as possible. Performing dissection here also eliminates the need to move the corpse through other, perhaps uncontaminated, sections of the fortress.”

“Of course,” Iswan said. “You took it on yourself to give the doctor permission for the operation?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Very fine,” Iswan said. “You show a certain levelheadedness, a quickness of response that is admirable.”

Merka sighed inwardly. Ober Iswan was the only one of these four men who had not pledged themselves to her, the last member of the Committee on Leadership who had any integrity. Now that he was pacified and, to some small degree, in her corner, her chances of ascendancy to the vacated seat of power were vastly increased.

The plague scare had been the best part of the plan. Only ten years had passed since five hundred had died from some never-diagnosed outbreak of disease. Ober Iswan had lost a son in that disaster.

The other three crowded forward, asking prearranged questions to which she supplied prearranged answers. Now and again, Ober Iswan leaned forward from his seat, bony hands folded before him, dark eyes intense, to ask a question of his own. These were never difficult to answer and, indeed, were the questions they had expected of him. For weeks now his associates had been subtly informing him of Merka Shanly's capabilities, intelligence and commitment to Lady Nature's ideals. It was hoped that all of these bits of carefully constructed praise for her, along with the set questions the other men were now putting to her, would give Ober Iswan the idea of proposing her name for the post of General.

Though a majority vote by the seven-member committee was necessary to elevate a normal citizen to the post of General, Ober Iswan was the only committee member who could propose names for possible election. He must be made to propose hers.

If he did not, he must be eliminated.

Now there could be no halfway measures.

In an hour Dr. Tokel Danfrey came into the main lounge and looked at them somberly for a moment. Then, in his deep and authoritative voice, he said, “I have dissected the General's corpse and, on my own initiative, have consigned it to the incinerator by way of the master-bedroom chute. I have subjected myself to sonic cleansing in the General's bathroom and have given myself a massive dose of antibiotics. His room will be sealed for a period of thirty days and conscientiously sterilized.”

“You've found something!” Ober Iswan gasped, rising up, his thin hands fisted at his sides.

“I found nothing,'' the doctor said. “It appears to be a simple case of heart failure, for natural causes. But whenever a man who appeared to be in the best of health one day dies the next, I like to take precautions. I remember the plague of a decade ago.”

“So do we all,” Iswan said. He had relaxed slightly, but was still tense.

Merka said, “I'll make arrangements for new quarters immediately and place a requisition for a wardrobe. My old clothes, of course, must not be taken from that room. And I wish to make a suggestion that may not be within my province.”

She addressed this remark to Ober Iswan who said, “Yes?”

“A new General should be elected posthaste. If anything should come of this plague threat, the existence of Preakness Bay may well depend on having a decisive leader.”

“I agree,” Iswan said. “I'll convene the committee immediately.”

The name of Plino Grimwaldowine was first proposed as a replacement for the fallen leader.

The Committee on Leadership rejected him, soundly, over the course of seven ballots.

Ober Iswan next expressed faith in Castigone Pei, who had once led a successful campaign against the tainted in the days when the enclave had maintained Nature Cleansers and who now was known for his poetry and gentleness. Such a man, containing violence and peace, must be special.

The committee disagreed.

Third: Cooper Hine.

He was turned down.

Merka Shanly was proposed as the fourth name.

She won rapid acceptance.

While the Military Suite was quarantined, suitable temporary quarters were established for the new General, Preakness Bay's first female leader in eighty-six years. Since the fortress had been designed to provide comfortable lodging for fifty thousand people, but now housed fewer than five thousand, no problem was encountered in clearing and appointing a lavish suite for the new General.

By nightfall Merka Shanly sat alone in her bedroom, triumphant, having dispatched a dozen orders to her confidants who must now be rewarded for their loyalty.

In the three months since she had become the late General's mistress conditions in the enclave had gone unchanged. Prewar supplies were wasted, while no provisions were made for survival once they had been used up. On a recent tour of the three hundred storage vaults beneath the fortress she had seen that they could last only another ten years at their present rate of thoughtless consumption. She had worked hard to establish sympathizers and had successfully performed the bold murder of her master. She had earned the right to set a new course for the people she ruled.

But she worried, now, that she would not last long enough to effect these changes. Only three days ago she had begun to develop a rudimentary telepathic talent.

27

Leaving the mist-shrouded formations of Smoke Den for the civilized land called January Slash, the five espers returned to their routine of travel by darkness and sleep by day. The nearest Pure enclave was the Jinyi Fortress, far to the north of the province, beyond the Hadaspuri Sea, and none of the tainted folk in this region appeared to be aware that esper fugitives might be crossing their land. This should have been, with minimal precautions, a time of peace for the travelers, a time to renew their strength to face more rugged obstacles ahead. Instead they found themselves growing more agitated by the day, partly because the land was parched and sandy and hardly fit for human habitation, and partly because their sleep was ruined every night by the intrusion of dreams they did not understand and for which they had no explanations.

Jask was the first to dream, on the first night after they departed the field of black glass. His visions were filled with places, people, and concepts that were utterly alien to him. Time and again, he woke, sitting straight up beside Melopina, a scream caught in his throat. He could never remember what the genesis of his terror had been, though it was profound enough to leave him shaking each time. Drifting back into sleep, he would pick up the dreams again, follow them through to the penultimate moment of unknown terror…

The following night Melopina dreamed as well, whimpering in her sleep so loudly that she wakened Kiera, who tried but failed to comfort her.

On the third night no one was spared the dreams.

In the morning, exhausted, they sat around a meager breakfast and discussed the vision they had somehow received: a vast city composed of living tissue, a pulsing mass of inhuman flesh that shaped itself to the needs of the millions who lived within it, a many-armed but stationary behemoth fully a hundred and fifty kilometers from end to end, containing five hundred levels of living space. Its streets were of living fiber, like bloodless veins that connected its many rooms, amphitheaters, auditoriums, shops, schools, churches, factories, entertainment centers and private homes. It grew where its citizens felt it needed to grow, provided water and electricity through its own metabolic processes. Though mindless, it contained an enormous brain, as large as an enclave fortress, which controlled its highly specialized functions.

Could any such creature have existed? Melopina 'pathed.

I've read a number of prewar books that survived the holocaust, Tedesco said. But I've never encountered mention of a living city. He considered a moment. However, there are many other things I know to exist that I never encountered mention of in those books.

Chaney 'pathed, It seems to me that the question of the living city's existence is not our major concern. What should interest us now is why we have all, simultaneously, begun to dream of it.

They weighed various possibilities and rejected all of them.

They continued their march north.

During the fourth sleeping period the dreams grew more intense, more urgent, as if they carried some message that must be understood.

No one, however, understood that message.

Jask had forgotten the unseen entity that he had been certain was trying to contact them in the Black Glass craters. He was more consumed by the current mystery of the dreams than by the older mystery of the silent creature that might or might not have been a figment of his imagination. On the sixth day, however, he came to understand that both phenomena were part of the same puzzle. He woke from the familiar dream at that point where it somehow metamorphosed into nightmare, and he instantly recognized the unseen being's presence — a distant fuzziness, a straining power, an urgency that had no outlet.

He told the others that he felt they had been approached by some invisible entity in the craters and that it had followed them. The dreams were its only successful attempts to establish contact.

The Black Presence? Tedesco 'pathed.

As I said before, this creature would not seem to be intelligent in the sense the Presence would have to be. It lacks order, coordination. If it were the Black Presence, it could contact us easily with its superior esp abilities.

But it must have some telepathic talent! Witness these awful dreams, Kiera 'pathed. She gnashed her pretty teeth in a show of dislike for the visions.

They could reach no conclusions.

By the tenth day out of the Smoke Den all of them could sense the straining nearness of the creature, could feel it drifting at the rim of their extrasensory perception, completely beyond the ken of their normal five senses.

Knowing it was there did nothing to suppress its emanations.

The five espers continued to sleep less than they would have liked, shocked awake again and again from the brink of that ultimate, unspeakable horror, which despite its vividness in dreams was never made quite clear enough to be remembered out of sleep.

They entered the Divide of Cessius, which marked the lower third of January Slash. They crossed its black-and-red marble floor, wending their way between the hundreds of upthrust steel spikes that dotted it, climbed its far wall and came out on the other side, into more sand and cactus.

The dreams continued.

At the edge of the desert they came upon the Vast Remains, the largest known ruins of prewar origins, wound through its blasted streets, past buildings that had fallen but had once stood two thousand meters high. They slept in the shadows of cylindrical buildings that had no entrances or windows; these monoliths still thrummed within and radiated a gentle heat by night, as a byproduct of some other, inexplicable task, filled by pointlessly functioning machinery that had been sealed against the ravages of time. They crossed the inner-city canals, which were filled with blood — or at least with some fluid that quite resembled ichor. They passed scattered robots that still stumbled through their programmed chores, oblivious of the end of their world and of the specterlike five who walked past them in the purple darkness.

And the dreams continued.

Having crossed the Vast Remains in less than a week, they camped by a clean brook, beneath a monstrous, mutated elm— the countryside having changed from its desert motif — and hoped that the ruins might somehow form a barrier between their unknown guest and themselves. All of them badly needed a good day's sleep.

As they lay beneath the gnarled elm, however, the unseen being pressed itself upon them more vigorously than ever: Melopina woke, crying out, with the feeling that some creature had hold of her and was pressing her down into the earth…

She kicked at it.

She flailed the air and snarled in fear.

She gasped for her breath. Jask could see that she was really having some trouble getting it, as if someone were choking her.

Mellie…?

Help me!

Jask bent over her and, as he touched her face to feel for a fever, he felt the… thing rise from her. A cold, damp force pushed over him, lingering long enough for him to recognize that distant psychic fuzziness, was gone without a trace.

When she had explained how it had felt, a formless mass of invisible flesh crushed into her, they discussed this new development.

It's getting bolder, whatever it is, Tedesco 'pathed.

Perhaps my grave robbing is finally being punished, Chaney 'pathed. Maybe this is the spirit of one of my victims, come to torture us.

No one laughed. They were willing to consider any possibility.

By the time they reached the abandoned port of Kittlesticks on the Hadaspuri Sea, they had all experienced physical contact — or something quite similar — with their unwanted companion. It approached them boldly now, while they were sleeping or while they were awake, as if it wished desperately to tell them something, to impart the essentials of a tale, an ethereal Ancient Mariner full of its own history of curses, calms and death.

The five espers walked through the cobbled streets of Kittlesticks, which was little more than a thousand years old but which had been abandoned more than eight centuries ago. Its inhabitants had reported that the ghosts of Indians could be seen in the streets at night, slinking from shadowed door to shadowed door and that in the morning skeletons were found in the beds of men who had gone to sleep with all their flesh. Whether Kittlesticks lay upon ancient Indian burial grounds or whether the sea had washed unclean spirits under the extensive docks in the harbor, no one could say. When half the town's population had died in this mysterious manner, the rest picked up their belongings and moved down the coast, where they founded the town of Last Resort, which had thrived as a Hadaspuri Sea marketplace for many centuries after.

They came out on the docks, where a hundred boats still lay, half rotten and sunken, others of metal and in relatively good repair.

Perhaps, 'pathed Chaney, the thing cannot follow us across water.

I fear that's an empty hole' Tedesco said.

By this time the women were staying close to their men, and the men continually cast wary glances over their shoulders. All of them were heavy-eyed and fuzzy-minded from lack of sleep.

We've nothing to lose by trying it, Melopina 'pathed.

She's right — Jask.

And by taking a ship, we would save days and days of marching around the shore of Hadaspuri — Kiera.

The water slapped at the docks.

The dead and dying ships caught pieces of the morning sun and shone in brief remembrance of their youth.

I've never sailed — Tedesco.

I have — Chaney.

You think you could teach us to man the rig of a ship like that one? Tedesco pointed at what appeared to be a sound, yellow alloy ship, which still rode high in the water after so many years and which contained three masts, all empty of sailcloth.

I could, I think — Chaney.

Jask? — Tedesco.

I'm for it.

Please! Let's try it! — Melopina.

They boarded the yellow ship, which was chained at the far end of the dock, and they found that she was in excellent condition. Her sealed engines, which had been placed in her hull during the Last War, were still functioning, monuments to the great technology of that age. Of its twenty robot tenders, twelve still rolled about the gleaming ship, polishing and repairing, scouring away the gradual erosions of time.

We could forget the sails, Jask said. The engines will carry us across the Hadaspuri.

Chaney stood on the bridge of the vessel, staring at the complex controls, his hairy fingers working them cautiously, his mouth twisted in concentration. Lights popped on; buzzers sounded; gauges registered levels of liquids and of power in the batteries. He looked away from all this for a moment and said to Jask, That's a bad idea.

We'd save a week or more if we didn't bother with sails.

Chaney smiled knowingly, returned to the controls. Then again, the engines might cut out on us when we're in the middle of all that damned water, leave us stranded there until our food and fresh water were gone. Maybe we could boil up a drinkable brew from seawater and survive a bit longer. In the end, though, we'd starve to death.

But those engines have been working for thousands of years, Chaney! Why should they suddenly quit on us when we need them?

And why should they not quit on us? Chaney asked.

Jask decided there was something to be desired in having a skipper who was at least a little pessimistic.

In all of Kittlesticks there was no cloth to be had — just tattered, mildewed, mold-covered, rotting lumps of stuff that could never be fashioned to fit their needs. Finally, though, in a dockside nautical shop they found a great length of lightweight metallic sailcloth whose metal fibers had withstood the gnawing of the years.

This material proved difficult to cut and sew, and they remained in Kittlesticks five days, working up three serviceable sails. They saw no Indians during the night, though their unearthly companion remained, haunting their sleep and forcing its mental aura into their esp perceptions all the time they were awake.

At last, in the early morning, with only a suggestion of the sun in the sky, they carried the three sails down to the ship.

Mist drifted in from the sea, oddly sweet scented.

They mounted the sails on the electrically controlled yard-arms, drew them up for testing, then rolled them down again and bound them fast until they might be needed. The noise of their labor echoed across the flat waters like footfalls in a tomb.

That afternoon, on the edge of town, they gathered wild fruit of many kinds, and packed it all into baskets and sacks. They killed a large animal that had descended from pure cattle but which was now a nine-horned, broader-shouldered, taller and meaner creature than its ancestors had been. They skinned and butchered this brute and salted several large pieces of meat. These stores were loaded in the galley of the ship, below the waterline, where they might be kept cool.

The espers dreamed at night; a living city, rooms of flesh, streets of pulsing tissue…

Before dawn of the seventh day they boarded the yellow ship, which they had christened Hadaspuri Maiden, half in fun and half in hopes that after being accorded such an honor the sea would look with favor upon their journey. The engines were brought up to full power, and the ship was taken from the dock at Kittlesticks. They had still seen no Indians.

The Hadaspuri was amber near the coast but grew a dirty green and then a rich blue color as they moved out onto it and it grew deeper beneath them.

As they passed the last of the atolls twenty kilometers from shore, rainbow-colored flying fish danced before their bow. Their wings were as much as four feet across, spreading gloriously as they arced from the sea and folding sleekly as they plummeted back in.

Standing by the rail on the deck of the open bridge door, looking at the heaving sea, through which the Maiden sliced like a knife, Tedesco 'pathed to Chaney, What do you know of the Hadaspuri?

It's six hundred kilometers from west to east, eight hundred from Kittlesticks on the south to any point on the north shore.

Is it inhabited?

The sea? Chaney 'pathed, perplexed.

Yes.

By fish.

How big are the fish?

Chaney grinned. So far as I know, the Hadaspuri contains no beasts. It is not, after all, a Wildlands sea.

Let's hope you're right.

If anything attacks our little ship, Chaney promised, I'll skin it, butcher it, and store it below.

No need. I hate fish.

The sunny sky grew overcast as they thrust deeper into the heart of the Hadaspuri. The clouds were light gray, riding high, bothersome but not threatening a storm.

Before long the air smelled only of the sea, without a single trace of land in it.

They ate a light lunch of fruit, a dinner of roasted beef basted in the juice of apples and pears.

The unseen creature remained with them.

It nagged at the periphery of their extrasensory perception, its voice a wail, its note that of endless suffering, its effect stronger than ever on the five espers.

Later, when Kiera took the first watch on the bridge, before the wheel and instruments, the others went below to sleep in the two main cabins, aft. Despite the fact that they were separated by the metal bulkheads, they all dreamed, simultaneously, of the living city. The dream swiftly graduated into a full-fledged nightmare and grew rapidly worse than that. No one could get any rest at all.

On deck again Tedesco 'pathed, Something will break soon.

Let's hope! — Jask said.

If I could see it, Chaney 'pathed, I could get these claws into it and take a good bite in its neck with these teeth. He held up his unsheathed claws and showed them his wicked teeth so that they would know he was not making an idle boast.

Melopina sat against the deck railing, her head hung down, her shoulders bent, exhausted, her pretty blue-green neck membranes hanging limp like sails without wind, and she did not say anything at all.

Something must break, Tedesco continued. Either this creature will get weary of us and go away, back to wherever it sprang from — or it will make itself fully understood, impart this compulsive information and deplete its energies of anguish.

And if it does neither? — Jask inquired.

Tedesco grunted. Then you will learn that a man can die from lack of sleep as easily as he can from lack of food or water.

The Hadaspuri Maiden knifed on through the sea as darkness became complete and the stars popped out through holes in the gray clouds.

28

Two days later the five passengers on the Hadaspuri Maiden moved sluggishly about their duties, not like real men but like zombies who had only a minimal charge of life donated them by sorcerers. They spoke hardly at all, either vocally or telepathically, because the amount of thought necessary to keep up a sensible conversation required energy they no longer possessed. Their eyes were swollen and teary. Their limbs felt as if they had been cast from lead; each step became a major journey, each tiny deed a Herculean effort.

Soon they were forced to keep two watchmen at the wheel instead of one, in order not to be accidentally taken off their course for the northern shore of the inland sea. Once, after Tedesco's watch, they found themselves twenty degrees off course, though the bruin, in his state of near-collapse, did not recall altering any of the controls. After Melopina's watch it was found that she had somehow turned them completely about and that they were driving hard for Kittlesticks, from which they had come only days ago. Melopina had no recollection of turning the ship about, though she had often fallen asleep over the wheel, to be awakened by the awful nightmares. Clearly she had not turned them around on purpose; therefore, the double watch was immediately established.

Though they had not originally been affected by the pitching waves through which the Maiden drove, they now found every tilt of the decks more than they could cope with. They zigzagged from place to place, staggering like drunkards, gripping safety rails and wondering when one of them might be pitched overboard.

Their appetites dwindled, became almost nonexistent. They wanted sleep, not food, and they ate what little they could only because they knew they dared not forego food altogether. They tasted nothing they consumed, but they got indigestion from all of it.

Out of desperation and the agony of her total exhaustion and her continuing inability to sleep properly, Melopina came up with the idea that was to save them. It did not seem like much; it had only a small chance of success; but it was, when all was said and done, their only hope of salvation.

The idea came to her during one of her duties at the wheel. She turned to Jask, who was her watchmate, and she 'pathed, Do you think that if we worked together, the five of us could combine our esp powers and create a single psychic probe stronger than any of our individual powers?

Jask did not want to have to respond. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, and his mouth was as dry as a handful of sand. Finally he said, I never thought much about it. I don't know.

Well, think about it now. It's important.

Nothing is important but sleep.

That's what I mean, she 'pathed.

He 'pathed a question mark.

She explained. The reason this creature keeps bothering us is to make full contact with us and — we all seem to agree — tell us something it deems vital to communicate.

So?

Thoughts moved like syrup down a two-degree incline.

She 'pathed, None of us has been able to reach the thing on his own. But suppose that when we pool our talents, we have the necessary — call it “range" — to establish contact.

Then?

Then we let it tell us what it wants.

And send it away satisfied?

Yes.

If it wants more than to just impart a message? If it won't pick up its invisible skirts and go back where it came from?

She 'pathed, Then we kill it.

With our amplified esp power?

Yes. And as Chaney said before, no moralizing. This thing will be the death of us unless we act against it.

No argument, he 'pathed. And I think you really have something here.

Do you really?

It's the only hope we have, in fact.

You don't sound very excited, she 'pathed.

I don't have the energy for excitement, he replied.

When Chaney and Kiera came onto the bridge to take their turn at watch, Jask sent the wolf-man to bring Tedesco into the small, instrument-crammed cabin. When they were all assembled, Melopina repeated her suggestion and opened the floor for discussion.

It sounds good to me — Kiera.

Maybe — Chaney.

Kiera leaned toward him and 'pathed, Have you got any better ideas, Captain?

Chaney — I'd still like to claw it and get my fangs in its neck.

His bushy tail whipped back and forth at that thought.

In effect that's what you'll be doing, Jask said. Only we'll substitute the esp power for claws and teeth if necessary.

Tedesco? Chaney had come to respect the bruin's opinions on most all matters.

I think it's worth a try, but…

But? — Jask.

Practically speaking, the bruin 'pathed, how do we go about establishing this mesh of our talents, this consolidation of forces?

They looked at Melopina.

She bit her blue lip, tossed her black hair away from her face, setting up a sympathetic vibration in her neck membranes.

She 'pathed, First, we ought to have all our attention on the problem. That will mean shutting down the ship and losing some travel time.

Right — Kiera.

We'll lose much more travel time if we don't solve this situation, Tedesco 'pathed. What else?

Melopina thought a moment, and said, Perhaps we should begin by forming a meditation circle, like they do in some religions.

That's an ancient means of focusing concentration, Tedesco said. It sounds like a worthy enough beginning to me.

They sat in a close circle on the main deck, forward of the bridge, while the Maiden rocked gently back and forth. They held hands and looked sheepishly at one another, embarrassed by this childish ritual but not certain how else to begin.

Now, Melopina 'pathed, leading them, we've first got to compress all of our perceptions, esp and otherwise, into a single entity. It seems to me that the best way to handle that is to start with only two of us. Jask and I will touch each other's minds, meld into one as we have often done in the last few weeks.

Then? — Tedesco.

When Jask and I have accomplished this, you, Tedesco, can attempt to meld with the two of us and form a tricornered personality — something we do casually all the time but which we 've never tried to this degree. If that is successful, then Kiera will join us. Then Chaney. Psychically, we will be a single being. Whether or not our telepathic and destructive esp powers can then be disciplined as a single force, I do not know. But we'll find out.

I'm ready, Jask 'pathed.

I can feel that damned — thing again! Kiera 'pathed. Let's not waste any more time.

They could all sense the invisible creature's nearness, an urgent psychic force that hung above them like a rain-laden cloud.

Okay, Melopina said.

Jask reached out, psychically, and touched the shell of her mind, caressed it and slowly began to meld with her.

She touched him at the same instant.

In a few seconds they were seeing through each other's eyes as well as through their own. Jask saw Melopina's face straight-on, through his own eyes, saw his face straight-on through her eyes.

They felt with two sets of nerves. Melopina felt her hand lying in his, his hand lying under hers; his heartbeat and her own; the wind on her skin and on his; a hair tickling his ear, her own hair blowing out behind her in the salty air; felt both female and male between her legs; felt flat-chested and breasted like a woman…

They tasted as one.

They heard sounds as one.

When the physical match was perfect, they swept into each other's minds, until they held no secrets, until, with an imperceptible lightening of the burden of life, they meshed perfectly together.

Now, Tedesco! Melopina/Jask 'pathed.

The bruin touched them hesitantly, moved carefully, but soon completed the meshing as easily as the lovers had.

Kiera! Melopina/Jask/Tedesco said.

Kiera came among them quickly, with no hesitation.

Chaney…

In half an hour the five had become as one, Melopina/ Jask/Tedesco/Kiera/Chaney, five bodies sharing a single psychic force.

The unseen creature moved closer, came in stronger than it had before, as if it sensed them reaching for it.

Imagine one grasping hand, Melopina ordered.

They tried.

One hand… one hand… straining high… straining with every bit of strength that it has… one hand… one… reaching for a distant star… one… hand… one… one… just one… all of us, one hand reaching…

Miraculously their combined esp powers coalesced into a blindingly pure instrument of learning.

In the blink of the gestalt's birth, the invisible companion who had been with them since the craters and who had denied them sleep for several days now, swooped in as if drawn by a magnet. It was then as clear as it could ever be. The message it had to impart was detailed, sensible to some extent, and delivered with immense impact:

The city lives, lives the city, loves the city, all its people. The city does the mathematical dance of cherish for its people, grows for its people, peoples for its people many rooms.

The people live, live for the people, love the people all their city. The people proclaim love for their city to all lesser cities, to all dead and never-living cities across the land.

The people ask; the city gives; the people use; the city feels complete, completely feels, cherishes its people, does the city.

The city lives all of forever, never dying is the city, mourning all its many peoples passing on before.

This thematic narrative was delivered like the blows from a psychic whip, lashing out relentlessly, frantically, bordering on the incoherent, the babblings of a being who had long been mad. None of the espers could yet sense what the creature was, but they knew that revelation would come.

Overlaying the narrative, in bright images, were scenes of the living city as it was meant to be, its citizens happy and its constantly expanding facilities always more than adequate to their needs. In the background, however, lay intimations of tragedy…

The city knows, knows the city, every lane and avenue, street and boulevard, knows its many rooms, homes, stores, factories and institutions, knows what is needed, what stands in want of repair, knows, knows intimately, the city, all of this, for all of this is the city.

Until that morning… That morning, the city discovers a neighborhood unknown to it, a slum, an impossible place, the city feels, impossible the city knows, but the city sees it nonetheless, does the city. The city investigates, grows sensors, stirs into every corner, does the city, every corner of this new place, unheard of place, stirs and stirs, does the city, finds rooms unfit for habitation, ugly rooms, not rooms of beauty, finds the city. The city finds streets that twist unnecessarily, grow too wide here, too narrow there, here with too high a ceiling, there with a ceiling too low… All this finds the city, sees the city, mourns the city, fears the city, and even more than this, even more… The city finds rooms where the walls are not smooth and pleasant, but knotted, gnarled, pimpled, pocked and mottled, finds the city all of this, and even more, even more.

The visual images that corresponded to the narrative were quite unsettling: ugly, misshapen rooms with queer things growing from the walls; in several instances, decomposing corpses and skeletons of human beings tangled up in the thick black branches and caved-in sacs of puslike material.

The city finds the dead, its people, all its dead people, killed in and by its rooms, its bad rooms, ugly rooms, rooms it never made or does not remember making, even though the city remembers, always remembers, knows and holds dear every memory of every generation of its peoples, loving peoples.

Days pass, and the city finds two more neighborhoods, places of decay, finds the city, sees the city, evil places, unknown places, dead or dying places, and the city panics, feels fear does the city, begins an inspection of its body, does the city, searching, fearful, finding trouble, does the city.

The city is equipped to dissect, to analyze, and the city does, cuts open its own sores, does the city, worried city, seeking answers, finding answers, terrified of predestined ends, is the city. Cancer grows in the city, explodes in random cells, in the city, sick city, rotting city, city all alone on a world it never made, wishing for the old world, its home world, city wishes, wish and wish, does the city, unable to fight the creeping sickness, city wishing, slowly dies.

Dies within it, all its peoples, cancer spreading like a fire, only days until its fingers lie hidden in every neighborhood. Cancer growing, faster, faster, sealing windows, closing doors, crushing rooms and smashing corridors, shifting, changing, eating the city, vomiting death to all its peoples, faster and faster, like a fire…

The visual impressions that flooded over the espers were vivid enough to make the narrative many times more terrifying than it might otherwise have been. The five seated on the rocking deck of the Hadaspuri Maiden not only saw the holocaust, but seemed abruptly thrust into the very middle of it, as if they stood amid the crumbling walls, shrinking corridors and hideous cancerous explosion of growth…

The city dying, sees its peoples dying, knows they trusted it, loved and lived and trusted it, knows it cannot let them perish as generations passed before. The city dying, knows these people, city's people every one, are the last that it will nourish, knows that if it loses these, it will be alone forever, past the ends of endless time and then some, without love and no more to cherish, lonely, lonely, aching city, city aching, wishing doom.

The city's brain is unaffected, unreined to its failing flesh, brain of city, all detachable, immortal even with no home. The city schemes to save some peoples, not their bodies, but their minds, schemes and thinks and sees to do, how to do it, save them all. In its brain, cells go unused, once the center of regulation, but no more body to control, could be used, the city figures, could be used to house other souls, souls of peoples, minds no longer fettered by the earthly flesh. Holding fast to its rotted body, the city brain seeks out its peoples, seeks their auras, mental nimbus, seeks, secures and saves them all, holds and cherishes, contains them, all its lovely, loving children, given new homes in its brain…

Then, in moments, the deed is done, city and peoples all are one, all flesh gone but minds remain, in the city's living brain. But a strange, unsettling feeling, courses through the city's brain, beats and pounds, calls out in anguish, like a beast refusing chains. Panic is the rush of souls, meeting hence from different poles, born of different worlds and finding, love and living not withstanding, that they have no common ground, city and peoples all fall down, all fall down, all fall down, down, down, down and down, city and peoples all fall down…

The last image of the invisible creature's projections was of a huge, convoluted brain, lying in a dark cavern, nestled in gossamer webs, pulsing with life but lacking any body to encase it.

The image flickered.

Was gone.

Slowly the five espers regained awareness of the real world…

Then the creature that has been plaguing us, Chaney said, is the living city itself — or at least the brain of the city that survived the body's death.

More than that, Melopina expanded. It's also the consciousness of a goodly portion of the millions of people who died in the city's collapse.

All of them mad, Tedesco 'pathed.

But why did they go insane? Kiera asked. I didn't fully understand that part of it.

The city made the mistake of thinking that since it had lived with people, contained them for centuries, it fully understood them. But it was apparently from another world — perhaps brought to Earth as a seed by our early space travelers — and it could not hope to understand the human mind. When it meshed with them, it drove them mad and pushed itself over the brink.

Melopina added to Tedesco's explanation. And since the brain is evidently immortal, it has trapped them in that state forever.

Kiera shuddered. Perhaps we should return to the craters, find the thing and destroy it.

Tedesco: I don't think so. I don't believe it wants to die.

Kiera: But what does it have to live for?

Tedesco: It has its compulsion.

Come again?

Tedesco: The city's behavior pattern reminds me of an ancient poem that survived the Last War. It was called “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and concerned an old sailor who spent his life repeating the story of a disaster at sea, compelled to repeat it as a form of penitence for his own complicity in that disaster. The city is a modern mariner.

I believe you're right, Jask 'pathed. I don't sense its presence any longer. I believe we're free of our unseen companion.

It's interesting to think about the power of its esp projections, Melopina said. It managed to follow us, psychically, for hundreds of kilometers, apparently without strain.

I'm glad we encountered it, Tedesco 'pathed.

Glad to lose all that sleep? — Chaney.

The living city taught us a valuable lesson, Tedesco 'pathed.

Then I'm a poor student — Chaney.

Tedesco: It taught us that it is fine to mesh minds as closely as the five of us have — as long as the parts of a gestalt are all of the same species. Such close contact between beings evolved on other worlds, under other circumstances, can bring madness. When and if we meet the Black Presence, we must be careful to hold our telepathic probing to minimal levels.

Then, leaving the Maiden at rest in the middle of the Hadaspuri Sea, they all slept soundly for the first time in days.

29

The Maiden crossed the Hadaspuri Sea without need of sails and put to shore twenty kilometers west of the isolated town of Langorra, which lay in the shadow of the Jinyi Fortress. The five espers hiked west and north, into the great pine forests, until they came to the village of Hoskins' Watch. Here they bartered for winter clothes to outfit Jask and Melopina against the rigors of snow and ice, which they would soon have to endure; Tedesco, Chaney and Kiera were comfortable enough in their own skins. They also obtained five sets of snowshoes for use in the high country, and spent a few minutes admiring the great statue of Hoskins, which stood at the edge of the town, peering down the rugged Lancerian Valley, an inscrutable expression on the stone face. They left town without incident, following the rising land, the leaden sky, and the sentinel pines that sheltered them from the worst of the north wind.

Thereafter, they did not encounter another settlement or see another human being for some long days.

Sixty kilometers from Hoskins' Watch the gray sky lowered like a canvas flat all during the dull afternoon and, with none of the warning of rain, salted the earth with a fine, dry snow. The tiny flakes sifted through the pines, eddied at the espers' feet, slowly built up as darkness came on.

They made camp in the lee of a granite cliff, sheltered by pines on two other sides, with a beautiful downhill view of the snowscape being created before their eyes. They had taken to marching by day and sleeping by night, for they now felt safe from pursuit, ever since they had gone unrecognized in Hoskins' Watch.

By morning more than eight inches of snow had fallen, and the sky still sifted the white stuff.

Tedesco stomped through the fluffy carpet as if it were not there, oblivious of the huge white clouds he kicked up in his wake.

Chaney and Kiera frolicked in the snow together, running ahead of the others, sometimes loping on all fours, more often progressing in the more sedate, two-footed manner when they realized they were being watched. They were in their element now, and their spirits were higher than they had been at any other point in the journey.

Jask and Melopina were the laggards, having neither the strength to plow through the snowfall as Tedesco did, nor the grace and agility to dance across it as the wolf-people did. No crust had been built up, and the depth was not sufficient to permit the use of the snowshoes. The others held their pace in order not to pull too far ahead of the most humanoid couple in their group.

On the fifteenth day out of Hoskins' Watch, when they were in need of fresh meat, Chaney and Kiera unburdened themselves of their packs and set out to find and kill a deer. Within an hour they had cut one from its herd and driven it back toward the day's camp. When it was near enough to make butchering and storage convenient, they went for it, running fast, leaping, claws catching, teeth snipping first at its legs then, in moments when it stumbled, at its neck.

Kiera scrambled onto its back, bit deep near its jugular.

The deer squealed, turned, leaped confusedly.

Chaney was on it.

The deer reared up again.

It snapped its shoulders. Shook its head. Flung him away.

Be careful! — Melopina.

The wolf-people, on all fours, circled their quarry.

The deer stood with its head bowed, dripping blood on the snow.

Kiera feinted toward it.

The deer was instantly alert, skittering sideways.

She snarled at it. She moved closer, putting her head down, her paws widespread, hissed menacingly at the wounded animal.

The deer watched her carefully.

Forgotten, Chaney came in fast.

The deer squealed when the wolf hamstrung its left hind leg.

Snow flew.

Crippled, the deer tried to stagger past Kiera, hobbling on three legs, done for and knowing it. Its breath was frost.

Kiera leaped, high.

She got its neck.

The deer went down. It kicked. It stilled. The hunt was over.

The two wolf-people wiped their bloodied muzzles in the snow, rose from their feet onto their hind legs and walked down to join the other three espers.

Jask had expected them to take longer to rise out of the primitive state he had just seen them in. When they were in front of him, however, he saw that they were the same Chaney and Kiera, more civilized than not, more prone to kindness than violence.

I wouldn't think you 'd need to rob graves to eat, Jask said to Chaney. With your hunting prowess, your table should always be full.

Chaney shrugged. I prefer to buy my meat when I crave it. My kind was equipped to hunt and kill, and our abilities kept our strain alive through the centuries of violence following the Last War and through the many years of barrenness after that. But these days the need to bring down our own game comes seldom. I enjoy a hunt, but only rarely. Besides, I'm halfway to being a vegetarian.

I thought you disliked moralists?

I do. My predilection for becoming a vegetarian is strictly a matter of taste, not morals.

Ten days later, far up in the snow belt, they ate the last of the deer meat and wondered if the few packages of jerky, which Tedesco had picked up in Hoskins' Watch, would keep them until they had reached the Glacier of Light. They had not seen any animal life for more than three days.

The snow was now as much as ten feet deep, crusted enough for them to make use of their snowshoes.

The wind wailed at night, mournful as a beast that had lost its mate, somehow reminding them of the invisible companion they had picked up at the black glass craters and gotten rid of in the middle of the Hadaspuri Sea. All of that, of course, seemed to have happened in another lifetime, centuries ago.

During the day the sun glared on the diamond surface of the snow fields, giving the illusion that they walked upon a magnificent mirror or across the top of a serene ocean.

As they walked, the snow melted on the pelts of Tedesco, Kiera and Chaney. At night, as they lay sleeping, the water froze in pellets. When they woke again, they were bedecked in transparent pearls.

At last, a day before their last packages of jerky would have run out, they topped a white rise near sunset and looked out across the basin of land, which at its far end was stoppered by the mammoth anterior wall of the Glacier of Light.

30

They stood at the base of the glacier. Glowing worms of pastel light, twisting through the ice, shed little illumination on them. Less, even, than the stars that had been revealed in a cloudless sky.

The Black Presence isn't here — Melopina.

How do you know? — Jask.

Reach for it with your esp.

He tried. Well?

Did you find anything at all? — Melopina.

Reluctantly he admitted, No.

Perhaps we're not using our esp properly — Kiera.

How else could it be used? — Melopina.

I sense something in there — Tedesco.

Chaney: Me, too.

What? — the other three.

A machine, I think, Tedesco 'pathed.

The Black Presence would have machines, Kiera 'pathed.

And could the Presence, itself, be a machine? — Jask.

The old books don't say so — Tedesco.

You've previously admitted that the old books omit many things — Jask.

But omit something so basic? — I doubt that.

Melopina: I think I am receiving something besides a machine.

Oh?

A very minimal psychic radiation.

The wind battered the side of the glacier.

The worms of light lay still, dead but glowing.

There, yes — Kiera.

A man — Chaney.

No, it's a woman — Tedesco.

Both — Jask.

More than two — Melopina.

One by one, they sat down on the hard-packed snow and ice.

Hundreds of people — Kiera.

But none of them quite alive? Melopina 'pathed. Then again, how could they be alive in the center of a glacier?

They should be helped, Jask said. But how?

We can't melt a glacier, Chaney 'pathed.

They don't want help — Melopina.

They like it in there? — Chaney.

They went there of their own accord — Melopina.

I'm getting the same impression — Tedesco.

But—

They have been frozen on purpose, Tedesco 'pathed. The machines tend them, have tended them for thousands of years.

To what end? Chaney asked.

Preservation until… Melopina strained, searching the numbed minds of the glacier's inhabitants.

Until what? — Chaney.

Stop asking questions and help us find out — Kiera.

They 're being preserved until the Earth is fit for them, Jask 'pathed.

Until, Melopina expanded, the Last War is over, and the Earth is civilized again. What are they waiting for?

They have their own criteria for “civilization,” Tedesco said.

So? — Chaney.

And those criteria are much different from ours. They're waiting for cities to grow up again, become as mighty as cities were in their day. They don't want to be awakened from their cryogenic state to face a world without all the comforts they became accustomed to.

They may wait forever — Chaney.

Why should they mind? Jask 'pathed. They have no sense of time. “Forever” is no longer than a day to them.

These were the richest and most cunning men and women of those times just prior to the Last War, Tedesco 'pathed. They saw that total destruction was coming, and they prepared for it.

They ran from responsibility, Chaney disagreed.

How can a single individual stop the tide of mass hysteria? — Kiera.

Agreed, Jask 'pathed. Chaney's acting like the moralist he dislikes. These people did what they thought wisest.

They survived — Tedesco.

As icicles? — Chaney.

The wind blew spicules of ice against their backs as they sat below the glacier, staring up.

Someday they'll be warmed — Tedesco.

They'll join society again, in its next great era, as if no time has passed at all — Jask 'pathed.

If there is another great era — Chaney.

Night fell across the plain.

The air grew colder still.

They'll take up the reins of the Earth long after all of us have turned to dust — Melopina.

Chaney said, This is nothing but a morgue full of zombies, then.

A cryogenic laboratory, full of paying customers — Jask.

Morgue and zombies, Chaney insisted.

The grave robber should know — Tedesco.

Chaney got to his feet, slapped his hands against his sides to knock away the thin film of ice that had begun to form on him. He looked up at the glacier one last time. No matter what they are, he 'pathed, they are not the Black Presence.

The others rose, too.

We can't afford to waste time — Chaney.

We'll eat and start walking — Tedesco.

Without sleep? — Kiera.

If we pause to sleep, our food may run out before we get out of these arctic climes and into regions where game flourishes, Tedesco 'pathed.

Over a cold supper of beef jerky, Tedesco explained the markings on his third map.

At least, Kiera 'pathed, we know where the Presence is. We have only to get there.

Let's not build false hopes, Melopina 'pathed. Perhaps none of these three locations is inhabited by the Presence.

They all looked at the bruin.

He tore off a chunk of meat from a stick of jerky and shrugged. Melopina may be right.

If she is, Chaney 'pathed, what do we do then?

No one had an answer for that.