Man of Two Worlds Page 13

  When he was finished, he went out and found the man scooping a deep hole in the sands. Wondering at its purpose, Ketan bent to help. The glowing coals of the fire gave the only light by the time they were through. Treading heavily the man entered the cave and returned slowly, bearing the tightly wrapped forms of the woman and the infant.

  He lowered them tenderly into the hole in the sand. With a soft, windlike sound the sand was brushed back over the bodies and formed a low mound. And all was stillness once more.

  The second globe was rising, now, Ketan saw. It was coming up over the low hills from whence the stream was flowing. But something was wrong with it. It was a pale, insignificant thing that spread only a cold silvery light over the landscape. For the first time Ketan felt a surge of fear. This unnatural globe spoke of a universe where Kronweld’s existence was a mere fantasy.

  He turned to the man. The latter was standing still, face contorted with utter bitterness, bathed in the silver glow. With a shudder, his body gathered into itself in a contraction that seemed to swell and shrink him at once. Every muscle was drawn to the limit of its power. He stood out, a fearful silhouette of black and silver.

  And one mighty fist was raised in the night, testifying to the sudden burst of rage and berserk fury that poured from his throat. Then that fist came down and pressed brutally against his face as his shoulders hunched over that mound in the sand.

  He raised and sprang away. Before Ketan’s eyes could distinguish the point of the shadowy forest at which he headed, he was gone.

  Fear closed down upon Ketan. The mad, meanirigless drama he liad witnessed that afternoon haunted reason from his mind. The utterly foreign surroundings bespoke only nightmare creations, and his body ached from its exertions and lack of food.

  Wearily, he spread the robe on the hard sand and lay -upon it, not daring the ghosts that stood watch in the cavern. The fire died and he slept.

  XVI.

  In the nighttime it came again— the dream and the vision. But it was like a waking vision and not a dream of night and a tired mind. It seemed to open before him and around him slowly, as if in creation while he watched. The ocean of sand undulated and swirled and became solid. Without being aware of rising, he was upon his feet and they were pumping endlessly through the dragging sands.

  He was closer to the pinnacle of rock than he had ever been before. It rose a hundred times his height above the desert floor. Sheer walls shot up on every side, but he knew how to reach the top.

  He drew nearer. The whining sands rose to sting his face like sparkling needles surging upon him in air-borne waves. A low moan spoke from all the desert as if it were one mighty voice. The cloud of sand increased and beat about his head. It obscured his vision, blinded, he slogged on. Then there came again the voice—

  “You must not fail, Lonely One. All my world lies in your hands. Come—”

  He awoke trembling with cold. The sculptored plastic served well to conserve body heat, but it and the induction robes did not entirely suffice for clothing.

  He looked about for material to build a fire, though he did not know how he was going to make one without a radioactive starter.

  Then the smell of smoke and the crackling of burning wood came to him. He turned. Down at the edge of the stream a fire was roaring, and before it a man sat on his haunches gnawing fiercely at a huge chunk of meat. It was the bearded man of the night before.

  Ketan moved down the beach, uncertain of how he would be met, but his steps quickened as he felt the radiant heat of the fire.

  He paused and looked at the man. Indifferently, and with 110 expression upon his face, he offered Ketan a slab of meat that had been roasting over the flames. Gladly, Ketan accepted it and squatted upon the warm sand.

  Partially satisfied, Ketan looked at the remains of the carcass from which they were eating. It was a fairly large animal with a smooth, brown hide and with forked horns bearing many points upon its head. It was not as large or as heavily built as the Bors.

  When Ketan turned back to him the bearded man had finished eating, and his head was buried between his knees. He looked up as Ketan stirred. A half dozen strangely familiar words came slowly from his lips.

  Ketan thought he was being asked who he was. He told the bearded one, who seemed to listen attentively. He seemed to evince a half comprehension even as did Ketan and their verbal exchange was begun. Ketan decided there was yet an advantage in his disguise and kept his voice at falsetto pitch.

  The man indicated his name as William Douglas. To Ketan it sounded as if it were two names, but he accepted both since the man indicated no preference for one or the other.

  The wound that Ketan had inflicted the day before was caked with dry blood and swollen. After the meal, William Douglas washed the wound at the stream and then went into the woods. He returned with a few leaves that he chewed and matted together and bound to his head with a strip torn from his clothing.

  He poured water and sand over the fire. Expertly, he cut the two hind quarters from the carcass and hoisted them on his shoulders. Ketan suggested he carry some. William Douglas looked at the female disguise questioningly, then gave him a forequarter.

  They started down the beachway. William Douglas did not look back towards the spot where the woman and the little human were buried in the sand.

  There was no question in Ketan’s mind about following the man. There was nothing else to do. He wanted to learn to speak with him, to find out where he came from, and where this strange, wild land was.

  Most of all, he wanted to assuage the loneliness that was like hunger within him. Companionship in this alien land was worth life itself. His mind had shaken off its shocked lethargy of the day before somewhat, and he recognized that this was certainly not death, as he had fantastically presumed. Nor did the bridge of time and space he had crossed lead to any land in the world of Kronweld. He had come through the Edge, he was certain.

  But where was the Edge? Why was it not visible here?

  And ever, his thoughts went back to Elta. He must somehow find a way back, hoping until all reason for hope was gone that she might yet be safe.

  Hampered by the burden of the meat and the inability to use sign language helps, their attempts at conversation went lamely for a time, but Ketan began swiftly gaining a vocabulary in the language of William Douglas. It became obvious that Ketan would do the learning, rather than vice versa.

  William Douglas told him they were heading for a village of about two hundred inhabitants and that they should reach there by nightfall.

  Ketan inquired about the globes in the sky. He tried to indicate that there should be two of nearly equal brightness, but it was impossible to make the man understand that.

  He pointed upward with the stub of the hindquarter he carried. “Sun,” he said. “Last night you saw the moon.”

  Ketan’s mind began to accept that those were the only two globes visible. But it floundered when he tried to conceive them as different globes from those he knew. He gave it up to the ever growing list of inexplicables.

  There was a more burning quest that his mind would not relinquish and now he tried to describe it. Half in words of William Douglas’ language, and half in his own, he said, “I want to find a desert place where there is only sand and a great rock that reaches up”

  Bending down, he drew a wide circle in the sand and placed a sliver of rock in its center, then he stood up to indicate the horizon and the great height of the rock above him.

  William Douglas looked puzzled. He pointed into the far distance through the trees. “Desert,” he said. “Sand.” But he indicated the rock and shook his head.

  They moved on and the day grew late. It was almost dark in the depths amid the trees. Earlier, William Douglas had kept a cautious glance roving constantly about, but now he marched straight on with out glancing aside, as if whatever danger he had once feared were now removed.

  Ketan despaired of finding the pinnacle. If only there were some indi
cations where it was, something more than the endless blowing sand. Perhaps it had no counterpart in reality at all. Perhaps it was only the result of some early intense stimulus that repeated the dream when his mind was tense and strained.

  But he didn’t believe that. He believed, with no rational excuse for doing so, that the pinnacle was real, that somewhere it existed and that he must find it or go mad. The first time the vision had come, he recalled, was the first night he spent out of the Temple after his birth into Kronweld. It had terrified him, for he had not been asleep. He was sure of that. He had been awake in a room with others, listening to one of the Teachers. Suddenly all his surroundings had blanked out and he found himself trudging through that desert seeking that faraway pinnacle, which was then on the horizon.

  Each time, each of the eighteen times, it had seemed closer, as if he were slowly progressing in that other existence towards his goal. Sometimes he wondered if that were the real world and all of Kronweld was only his dream.

  Night came swiftly in the forest, but William Douglas did not slow his pace. They had stopped at midday for a rest and another meal of the meat, but now they kept going. They were near the village, William Douglas said.

  Ketan wondered what would happen when he got there. What would he do? Would his life become an endless quest for the pinnacle and the way back to Elta?

  So intent was he upon his own thoughts that he didn’t notice that William Douglas had stopped until he bumped into him. The man had topped a low rise and now stood immobile, staring down. Ketan came up and followed his silent gaze with his own eyes.

  Below them, in a tiny valley, smoke rose in a slow, grayish mass from a hundred dimly glowing fires. It must have burned all day, Ketan thought, and now was dying out.

  From William Douglas’ throat there came a low animal sound that Ketan knew was not words, but it convcyed unmistakably its world of despair and anguish.

  There was not a dwelling left standing as they descended the hill and walked among the smoking ruins. They came to the center and William Douglas dropped the precious hindquarters of meat to the ground. His shoulders ached and burned from carrying the burden throughout the day. Now there was no need to carry it further. Ketan understood he meant it as a present for the villagers.

  “What happened?” Ketan asked.

  “Statists—hunter Statists—”

  The word was like a flame that touched off a holocaust of recollections. Once—once, on that night at the Karildcx when Matra had come to him and demanded use of the master keyboard, she had said — what was it?—“For more than a hundred tara an organization has existed in our midst—the final objective—is the destruction of Kronweld. They fear us and will destroy us. They are the Statists.”

  Ketan remembered her words. He could see her face as she had stood trembling with a fear that seemed to shake her withered form like a dry branch in a cold, Dark Land wind.

  But she had not told him who the Statists were, only that strange fantasy of a world surrounding Kronweld, She had said that Elta knew what to do, and he had not been able to find what Elta knew.

  “Who are the Statists?” Ketan turned to William Douglas. His voice was tense in. restrained excitement.

  “The Statists?” William Douglas let his hand drift out in a gesture over the ruins. “They are those who do this. Tyrants, madmen, despoilers—how many words are there in your language to describe such? They are all of that and more. They have ruined a world.”

  Ketan didn’t comprehend. There were no words in his language to describe those who would create such a ruin.

  “Men?” he asked.

  William Douglas’ face grimaced, “They have the general form of men.”

  Ketan understood neither the tone nor the words. Before he could speak, William Douglas bent down and picked up one of the fallen hindquarters, “We’ll have to go on,” he said, dully. “There is an other village we can reach by midnight—if it still exists.”

  The Statists—whatever the word meant, it was a connection between this world and Kronweld. It didn’t matter that it was a word spoken in hatred and bitterness. It was a connection, and hope surged within Ketan. He would find what it meant.

  William Douglas seemed able to pick his way unerringly in the dark. Ketan stumbled and groped almost blindly behind him. Once he stumbled and fell over an object that lay across the path. As he rose, he turned to see what it was, but William Douglas urged him on.

  “Dead,” he said.

  Then Ketan knew what that and the other shapeless objects strewn through the trees were. The villagers, the two hundred who had lived here, were dead with their village.

  Ketan did not know how long it was that he stumbled and groped before William Douglas put out a cautioning hand and brought him to a standstill. For a moment he couldn’t see why they had stopped. He followed the direction of William Douglas’ pointing finger with his gaze, and glimpsed dimly in the light of the feeble globe a movement on the trail ahead of them.

  There was a continuous, undulating line of motion there. His vision resolved it into individuals, and he saw more than a dozen figures.

  William Douglas advanced cautiously until they were only a score of steps behind the figures. Then he said, “It’s all right. They are from the Village Brent.”

  The figures turned with a frightened start as William Douglas hailed them. Then, recognizing him, they burst upon him and their voices were mournful in the night. In a vocal exchange so rapid that Ketan could catch only a fraction of it, they told the story of the destruction of Village Brent.

  There were eight men and six women. Two of the latter carried little ones. Some of them were injured. A man’s arm dangled like a horrible pendulum when lie moved. One of the woman had hair so blood covered that it was molded upon her head and about her face. Surely they would be taken to the Place of Dying. Ketan thought. And then it occurred to him. These people had 110 Place of Dying. They fell and were buried where they lay, even as back at the cave.

  But what, then, would happen to these mangled ones?

  Assuming leadership, William Douglas took control and they continued their way. Left to himself, Ketan tried to imagine the Statists, who or what they were.

  He failed to conceive men who could wreak such destruction and death as he had seen. In all the history of Kronweld no such event had been witnessed—but this was not the world of Kronweld.

  Their common point was the enemy. The Statists. Was it possible that the Statists planned such destruction for Kronweld?

  By midnight they came to the next village. As they approached, Ketan felt a rising apprehension in the refugees. They came at last to a turn in the trail that revealed the village site. An audible gasp and thankful cries came from the band. The village was intact and undamaged.

  Few impressions bore any logic to Ketan as they came into the narrow streets and roused the villagers. He saw that William Douglas was recognized as an authority by all. Why or what position he held, Ketan did not find out. He was shuffled among the refugees and found himself led into a dingy shelter, lighted by an oil-burning lamp. There was a dirty bed of hewn slabs against the far wall. The coverings were animal skins covered with a grayish white fluff.

  An overfat, middle-aged woman directed him into the room. He got just a glimpse of her bedraggled hair and tattered dress of skins. The latter looked like the hide of the animal they had eaten that day. At least there were no inhibitions among these people regarding the use of animals, Ketan reflected.

  Later, she brought in a bowl of bitter liquid and a slab of hard cooked meat. He ate a fraction of it. Too weary for any further investigation or questioning of his surroundings, he slept.

  As soon as he was awake the next morning, William Douglas came to see him. There was still a deference in the man’s manner because of Ketan’s disguise and Ketan wondered how best to get rid of it. Its deterioration was giving him a rather horrible appearance.

  But he had no time to consider that, now.
With William Douglas was another man, lean and almost black with pigment Ketan recognized as due to the rays of the globe. He wondered that they did not use day cloaks of some kind.

  “This is John Edwards,” William Douglas said.

  “John Edwards,” Ketan repeated.

  The man parted his lips in a welcoming grin of white teeth.

  “Tell him where you want to go,” said William Douglas. “The sand and the rock.”

  Ketan’s whole being quivered. Was this a man who could lead him to the pinnacle? Eagerly, he described the scene as he had to William Douglas.

  The man looked puzzled and spoke to William Douglas in words that Ketan could not understand. The newcomer looked thoughtful, then he pointed out the door and far beyond the forest and mentioned a name. William Douglas nodded.

  He turned to Ketan. “John Edwards knows this country better than anyone. He thinks he can lead you to the place you describe. Will you go with him?”

  “Yes! Now?”

  William Douglas shook his head. “Not yet; we must rest. It is a long journey and there is much-you must tell me. We must learn to speak better. In a day or two we will go.”

  “You will come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Why he was so anxious for William Douglas to accompany him, Ketan could not have said, except that that first terrible moment of awakening in the forest had been dispelled by the man and in his mind, Ketan still clung to him like an anchor of sanity.

  They sat down and motioned Ketan to do likewise.

  “We want to talk to you,” William Douglas said. He formed his words slowly, groping for expression that he knew would be intelligible. “Your coming is of great importance to us. We have not told the villagers that you are not one of us. We want to know if you have come to help us or if you have escaped too, from some land that is unknown to us. Do you know where you are?”

  Ketan shook his head. “There should be two great globes, where there is only one. There should be the Great Edge, visible from any part of the land.”