Alone Against Tomorrow Part 5

The ship shuddered, reversed drives, and slipped back into invers.p.a.ce.

CHAPTER IV.

Much sky winked back at him. He sat on the bluff, wind tousling his gray hair, flapping softly at the dirty shirt-tail hanging from his pants top.

The Minstrel sat on the bluff watching the land fall slopingly away under him, down to the shining hide of the sprawling dragon that was a city, lying in the cup of the hills. The dragon that crouched where lush gra.s.s had once grown.

On this quiet world, far from a red sun that shone high and steady, the Minstrel sat and pondered the many kinds of peace. And the kind that is not peace, can never be peace.

His eyes turned once more to the sage and eternal advice of the blackness above. No one saw him wink back at the silent stars.

With a sigh he slung the battered theremin over his sloping shoulders. It was a portable machine, with both rods bent and its power-pack patched and soldered. His body almost at once a.s.sumed the half- slouched, round-shouldered walk of the wanderer. He ambled down the hill toward the rocket field.

They called it the rocket field, out here on the Edge, but they didn't use rockets any longer. Now they rode to s.p.a.ce on strange tubes that whistled and sparkled behind the ship till it flicked off into some crazy quilt not-s.p.a.ce, and was gone forever.

Tarmac clicked under the heels of his boots. Bright, shining boots, kept meticulously clean by polishing, overpolishing till they reflected back the corona of the field kliegs and, more faintly, the gleam of the stars. The Minstrel kept them cleaned and polished, a clashing note matched against his generally unkempt appearance.

He was tall, towering over almost everyone he had ever met in his homeless wanderings. His body was a lean and supple thing, like a high-tension wire, with the merest suggestion of contained power and quickness. He moved with an easy gait, accentuating his long legs and gangling arms, making his well- proportioned head seem a bubble precariously balanced on a neck too long and thin to support it.

He kept time to the click of the polished boots with a soft half-hum, half-whistle. The song was a dead song, long forgotten.

He came from beyond the mountains. No one knew where. No one cared where.

But they listened when he came. They listened almost reverently, with a desperation born of men who know they are severed from their home worlds, who know they will go out and out and seldom come back. He sang of s.p.a.ce, and he sang of land, and he sang of the peace that is left for Man-all men, no matter how many arms they had, or what their skin was colored-when he has expended the last little bit of Eternity to which he is ent.i.tled.

His voice had the sadness of death in it-the sadness of death before life has finished its work. But it also had the joy of metal under quick fingers, the strength of turned nickel-steel, and the whip of heart and soul working in loneliness. They listened when his song came with the night wind, probing, crying through the darkness of a thousand worlds and on a thousand winds.

The pitmen stopped their work as he came, silent but for the hum of his song and the beat of his boots on the blacktop. They watched as he came across the field.

He had been wandering the star-paths for many years now. He had appeared, and that was all; he was. They knew him as certainly as they knew themselves. They turned and he was like a pillar, set dark against the light and shadow of the field. He paced slowly, and they stopped the hoses feeding the radioactive food to the ships, and the torches with which they flayed the metal skins; and they listened.

The Minstrel knew they were listening, and he unslung his instrument, settling the narrow box with its tone-rods around his neck by its thong. His fingers cajoled and pried and extracted the song of a soul, cast into the pit of the void, left to die, crying in torment not so much at death, but at the terror of being alone when the last call came.

And the workmen cried.

They felt no shame as the tears coursed through the dirt on their faces and mixed with the sweat- shine of their toil. They stood, silent and dreaming, as he came toward them.

And before they even knew it was ended, and for seconds after the wail had fled back across the field into the mountains, they listened to the last notes of his lament.

Hands wiped clumsily across faces, leaving more dirt than before, and backs turned slowly as men resumed work. It seemed they could not face him, the nearer he came; as though he was too deep-seeing, too perceptive for them to be at ease close by. It was a mixture of respect and awe.

The Minstrel stood, waiting.

"Hey! you!" The Minstrel did not move. There was a pad of soft-soled feet behind him. A s.p.a.ceman-tanned, supple, almost as tall as the ballad-singer and reminding him of another s.p.a.ceman, a blond-haired boy he had known long ago-came up beside him.

"What can I do for ya, Minstrel?" asked the s.p.a.ceman, tones of the accent of a long distant Earth rich in his voice.

"What do they call this world?" the Minstrel asked. His voice was quiet, like a needle being drawn through velvet.

"The natives call it Audi, and the charts call it Rexa Majoris XXIX, Minstrel. Why?"

"It's time to move on."

The s.p.a.ceman grinned hugely, lines of amus.e.m.e.nt crinkling out around his watery brown eyes.

"Need a lift?"

The Minstrel nodded.

The s.p.a.ceman's face softened, the lines of squinting into the reaches of an eternal night broke and he extended his hand: "My name's Quantry; top dog on the Spirit of Lucy Marlowe. If you don't mind working your way singing for the pa.s.sengers, we'd be pleased to have you on board."

The tall man smiled, a quick radiance across the shadows of his face. "That isn't work."

"Then done!" exclaimed the s.p.a.ceman. "C'mon, I'll fix you a bunk in steerage."

They walked between the wiper gangs and the pitmen. They threaded their way between the glare of fluorotorches and the sputtering blast of robot welding instruments. The man named Quantry indicated the opening in the smooth side of the ship and the Minstrel clambered inside.

Quantry fixed the berth just behind the reactor feederbins, walling off a compartment with an electric blanket draped over a loading track rail. The Minstrel lay on his bunk -a repair bench-with a pillow under his head. He lay thinking.

The moments fled silently and his mind, deep in thought, hardly realized the ports were being dogged home, the radioactive additives being sluiced through their tubes to the converter-cells, the lift tubes being extruded. His mind did not leave its thoughts as the tubes warmed, turning the pit to green gla.s.s beneath the ship's bulk. Tubes that would carry the ship to an alt.i.tude where the Driver would be wakened from his sleep-or her sleep, as was more often the case with that particular breed of psioid-to snap the ship into invers.p.a.ce.

As the ship came unstuck from solid ground and hurled itself outward on its whistling sparks, the Minstrel lay back, letting the rea.s.suring hand of acceleration press him into deeper reverie. Thoughts spun: of the past, of the further past, and of all the pasts he had known.

Then the converter-cells cut off, the ship shuddered, and he knew they were invers.p.a.ced. The Minstrel sat up, his eyes far away. His thoughts were deep inside the cloudcover of a world billions of light-years away, hundreds of years lost to him. A world he would never see again.

There was a time for running, and a time for resting, but even in the running there could be resting.

He smiled to himself so faintly it was not a smile.

Down in the reactor rooms, they heard his song. They heard the build of it, matching, sustaining, ringing in harmony with the invers.p.a.ce drive. They grinned at each other with a softness their faces did not seem equipped to wear.

"It's gonna be a good trip," said one to another, smiling. In the officer's country, Quantry looked up at the tight-slammed shields blocking off the patchwork insanity of not-s.p.a.ce, and he smiled. It was going to be a good trip.

In the saloons, the pa.s.sengers listened to the odd strains of lonely music coming up from below, and even they were forced to admit, though they had no way of explaining how they knew, that this was indeed going to be a good trip.

And in steerage, his fingers wandering across the keyboard of the battered theremin, no one noticed that the man they called the Minstrel had lit his cigarette without a match.

Blind Lightning

WHEN KETTRIDGE BENT OVER to pick up the scurrying red lizard, the thing that had been waiting, struck.

Thought: this is the prelude to the Time of Fast. In bulk this strangely-formed will equal many cat- litters. It is warm and does not lose the Essence. When the Essence-Stealer screams from the heavens, this strangely-formed will be many feastings for me. Safety and a.s.sured Essence are mine. O boon at last granted! To the Lord of the Heaven I turn all thought! Lad-nar's Essence is yours at Ending!

The thing rose nine feet on powerfully-muscled legs; it had a sheened, glistening fur. It resembled a gorilla and a Brahma bull and a Kodiak bear and a number of other Terran animals, but it was none of them. The comparison was as inaccurate and brief as the moment Kettridge half-turned. He saw one of the thing's huge paws crashing toward him. The brief moment ended and Kettridge lay unconscious.

The huge beast bent from the waist and scooped up the man in the form-fitting metallic suit, brushing in annoyance at the belt of tools around the human's waist.

Lad-nar looked over one ma.s.sive shoulder at the sky.

Even as he watched, the roiling dark clouds split and a forked brilliance stabbed down at the jungle. Lad-nar squinted his eyes, unconsciously lowering the thin secondary lids over them, filtering out the worst of the light.

He shivered as the roar screamed across the sky.

Off to his left another blast of lightning fingered down, struck a towering blue plant with a shower of sparks and a dazzling flash. Thunder bubbled after it. The jungle smoked.

Thought: many risings and settings of the Great Warmer it has taken this Time of Fast to build.

Now it will last for many more. The Great Warmer will be hidden and the cold will settle across the land.

Lad-nar must find his way to the Place of Fasting. This strangely-formed will be many feastings.

He shoved the man under one furry arm, clasping his unconscious burden tightly. Lad-nar's eyes were frightened. He knew the time of Death and Forbidden Walking was at hand.

He loped off toward the mountains.

The first thing Kettridge saw when he awoke was the head of the beast. It was hanging suspended in the light from the storm. The roar of the rain pelting down in driving sheets, the brilliant white light of the lightning, all served as background for the huge beast's head. That wide, blunt nose, three flaring nostrils. The ma.s.sive double-lidded eyes-light from the fires outside blazing up in them like twin flickering comets. The high, hairy brow. The deep-black half-moons under the cheekbones.

The mouth of ripping, pointed teeth.

Kettridge was a man past the high tide of youth. He was not a strong man. At the beast's snort, the white-haired Earthman fainted.

It was a short stretch of unconsciousness. Kettridge blinked several times and tried to push himself up on elbows alarmingly weak. The sight that greeted him was substantially the same as before.

Lad-nar was still sitting, powerfully muscled legs crossed, inside the mouth of the small cave, staring at him. Only the monstrous, frightening head, with pointed ears ap.r.i.c.k, hanging there immobile.

"What-what-are you? We weren't expecting anything this large. The-the-survey said-" Kettridge quavered into silence.

Thought: what is this? This strangely-formed speaks in my head! This is not one with the cat- litters. They cannot speak! Is this a symbol, an omen, from the Lord of the Heaven?

What is it you ask, strangely-formed?

Kettridge felt the surge of thoughts in his mind. Felt it smash up against one nerve after another, sliding down and down in his head as the thoughts reverberated like an echo from far away. Over and over again.

"My G.o.d, the thing is telepathic!"

Old Kettridge knew it at once. He knew it because he had never experienced it before, and there was no doubting it. There had been a first time for everything for him. He knew the first time he had touched fire. He had known instantly it was fire, it would always be fire, and he must not touch it again.

He had known the first time love spoke to him. That had been once and never again. But he had known it the once it did speak. There are those things which Man senses but once, and knows them-under whatever names he has a.s.signed them-for what they are.

"You're telepathic!" he said again, hardly daring to believe it was true.

Thought: what is that? What do you speak of, strangely-formed? What is it that you say, that I hear as Reading Of The Essence? How is it you speak? Are you from the Lord of the Heaven?

Lad-nar's thick, leathery lips had not moved. The fanged mouth had not twisted in speech. To Kettridge it seemed there was a third being in the cave. The hideous beast before him, himself...and a third.

A speaker who roared in his mind, in a voice sharp and alert.

Thought: there is no one else here. This is the Place of Fasting. Lad-nar has cleansed this place of all previous Fasting Ones. You do not answer. There is fear mixed into your Essence, like the cat-litters.

Yet you are not one with them. Speak! Are you an omen?

Kettridge's lips began to tremble. He looked intently at the great hulk across from him. The Earthman had suddenly realized that the being was not only telepathic, but two-way receptive. It could not only direct its thoughts into Kettridge's mind, it could just as easily pluck the ideas from the Earthman's head.

This was no animal.

This was no beast.

This was sentient life. If not of a high cultural level, at least of fantastic mental abilities.

"I-I am from Earth," ventured Kettridge, sliding up against the warm stone wall of the cave.

Thought: The Heaven Home! I know, I know! O thankings! The Lord of the Heaven has sent you to me as many feastings.

In the s.p.a.ce of a few short seconds, as Lad-nar spoke in thoughts, Kettridge received a complete picture of the being's life. He knew there was a race on Blestone-many more like Lad-nar. All in a barbaric hiding state. The preliminary survey had not indicated any life of this sort. Obviously Lad-nar's race was dying off.

Kettridge tried to blank out his thoughts. He had to wait.

Thought: you can not hide the speaking in my head.

Kettridge became frantic. He knew what the thing planned for him. He received a sharp, cold mental image of the being crouched over his body, ripping an arm loose from its socket. The picture was too clear.He became ill, and the being's thoughts in his head reverberated a dislike of the Earthman's powers of imagination.

Thought: you have seen the feasting. Yet you are not like the cat-litters that squeal fear, fear, fear all the time that I feast on them. If you are not to eat, omen from the Heaven Lord-what are you?

Kettridge felt his throat muscles tighten. His hands inside the heat-resistant gloves clenched. He felt his age settle around him as though it was a heavy mantle. "I'm an alien ecologist," he said, knowing it would do no good.

Thought: this has no meaning for me.

"I'm from Earth. I'm from one of those-" Then he stopped, drawing breath in quickly, pulling the resilient hood of the suit against his mouth with the effort. The being could not possibly know about "one of those out there." It could not see the stars. Only occasionally could it see the sun. Only when the clouds parted. The dense cloud blanket of Blestone hid s.p.a.ce forever from the eyes of this monstrous being.

Thought: Urth! The Heaven Home! I know! I know!

There was a jubilation, a happiness in the thoughts. Something incongruous and terrifying when the old man put them into the head of that great thing illuminated by the storm.

Yet there was a humanness, a warmth, also.