The Books of the Wars (14 page)

The party quickly set to work, for they wanted to reach the Yards before the end of the month. Preliminary tests indicated that all three of the diversionary lines were dead. Fearing that the transformers involved in the switching of power had succumbed to the fierce sun or to the dust storms that seasonally plagued the area, the crew attempted to discover the difficulty: all seemed fine as far as they could tell.

Then, out of desperation, one of the crew ran a test on all eight of the original lines, and was horrified to discover that all of them carried full power.

Understandably shaken, the four set off for the last station, a hundred and seventy miles southeast of the Yards. It was set on the plain separating the mountains that ringed the Yards and the worst parts of the Barrens; here the final two lines were supposed to have been diverted all the way back to the capital of Yuma; standing on an artificial mound and surrounded by a stone wall, the station presented a forbidding face to an already vicious land.

The party had followed the wooden transmission poles from a cautious distance, fearing nothing in particular but having vague premonitions that they might find another detachment from the Armories heading for the same station.

They reached the little compound just before nightfall and hurriedly shut and barred the door behind them. The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains to the west, but none of the group could contain their morbid curiosity; testing equipment was applied to the transformers and the lines leading into and away from the station. The line running to Yuma's capital was another inoperative dummy, the eight lines going to the Yards all registered full power, and the diversionary equipment was patently phony.

Their worst expectations confirmed and the unavoidable conclusions being drawn, the four men settled down for the night, resolving to make a dash for the nearest Government garrison on the Tyne, two hundred miles to the northwest.

They posted only a single man on watch, despite their fears, so desolate was the surrounding wilderness; the man was named Annandale. Born and raised on the Great Plains east of the Caroline, he was the best horseman of the lot and much more at home amid the loneliness than the others, He had been trained as a weapons expert, which meant that he was lost with anything bigger than an automatic rifle, and had thus been given one of the O.E.I.'s treasured submachine guns; he was the party's protector, but at the moment he felt much less qualified for that post than the others deemed him.

Around three in the morning his drowsy attention was captured by a strange growling noise to the east. Thinking it to be some loathsome creature that had wandered down from the more fertile lands of the east or north—and consequently a very hungry, loathsome creature—he fearfully retreated to the farthest corner of the fort.

The noise became louder and less natural; there was a vehicle of some sort out there. Reassuring himself that he was, in fact, encountering a humanly-created force, Annandale decided to make a reconnaissance of the situation.

Being careful not to disturb the others—for it might after all be only the wind and his imagination—he saddled his horse, briefly checked his weapon, and moved out through the west-facing secondary gate.

He felt safer now, out beneath a familiar sky, even if the ground under his feet was hardly the soft grasslands of his home. Now he had space; space to run, he thought, but tried to dismiss that. Annandale led his horse directly west for a quarter of a mile, using the bulk of the fort to shield his movements from eastern eyes. He then traveled in a wide circling movement that should bring him up a little behind and to the south of the intruder.

Picking his way carefully through the dead scrub and rock, he reached his destination half an hour later. All he could hear now was a low metallic bubbling and what he supposed to be men talking in muffled tones. But he had miscalculated: the sounds were still to the east of him and the station was closer than he planned it to have been.

The moon had set by now, but the brilliant desert stars gave Annandale enough light to see by. He crouched and saw a black, crab-like object silhouetted against the false dawn. As his eyes became better adjusted to the faint light, he detected the stick-figures of men standing by the shape in groups or at work on its hide.

Annandale found a short length of rope and hobbled his horse. He approached as quietly as possible. It was a tank—that he recognized as soon as he got within fifty yards of it. But the armored vehicles that he knew were either rotting hulks, dead and lonely in the green immensities of the Plains, or pictured in the few First World books he had read. Then, of course, there were the miserable, ox-drawn fighting wagons that had been the tanks of his childhood.

This was neither. It was motor driven—even at low idle the vehicle's engine sounded like a sleeping storm. Annandale thought it might be a patrol from the Yards, a resurrected giant sent to guard the
Victory
; indeed that must have been it, for he knew that only the Yards had the ability to put out such a mechanism. But that would have made it a First World machine, and this was definitely not. Annandale could not say exactly what disqualified it; it was the feeling of wanton, purposeless evil that invested the hulking shadow in front of him. No, even that was wrong, for he had sensed much the same thing when examining the plans for First World tanks; but, dammit, they were different. Cold and cruel they were and their evil was of a rigidly directed character; with them, Death sounded out its victims with a ponderous but jewel-like micrometer. They were lower and sleeker, too, clean and light in their titanic manner.

But in this machine, Death was a drunken, moronic brute, careening about the countryside, his ragged scythe ravaging the land in senseless, ghastly arcs. It was anything but clean: even though he was upwind of the tank he could still smell it. Not the sharp odor of polished steel and fine oil, so beloved by the Technos, but one of metallic and human corruption. The starlight played over the cancerous, cobbled skin and Annandale saw that the smooth curves and faceted turrets of the First Days had been replaced by harsh angles and rough surfaces. Nondescript tubes and pipes crawled over its huge exterior like maggots over a corpse.

It was larger than any First World tank he had ever read about; it was not more dreadful or terrifying, for those were qualities inherent in any tank's function, but it was infinitely more repellent. Annandale had always thought of the tankers of old as skilled technicians, accomplishing a job they detested as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The crew of this tank, Annandale knew, would revel in their killings and slaughter—butchers instead of surgeons.

Annandale strained to identify the vehicle. His attention was attracted by the scraps of metal. Some of the men were working on a panel just in back of the turret. One of the men on the ground picked something up and swung himself aboard on the tank's colossal gun barrel. He walked aft to the men; as he reached them, he switched on a torch.

Annandale saw that the turret was a mass of rust and clumsy welds; green lichens seemed to be growing around the twin hatches, and black blast stains marked the punctures where machine guns were hidden. He also saw a black triangle with a white border encircling a star: the ensign of the O.P. and the Armories. There was a crude device ahead of it, a mailed fist and winged horse, but he did not recognize it and assumed it to be a regimental or personal crest.

The men slammed the panel tight and disappeared into the tank through various openings. The engine was revved up, splitting night and polluting the false dawn with its exhausts.

The tank lurched forward, and Annandale saw just how big the thing really was. It began to move toward the station, and panic seized him. Leaping to his feet, Annandale ran to his horse and flicked off the fetters; he rode unthinkingly for the station, his insane yelling all but lost in the tank's roarings.

He turned to see a piercing light spring from a mount beside the main gun. Blue-white it was, and it played like a hunting fire over the dead land, the grim walls of the station, and finally the horseman. The light steadied on Annandale. Another sound: his companions had awakened and were firing their useless rifles at the monster. The beam was lost in another, redder brilliance; an incredible hollow thud joined the wavering fire. Annandale crouched, trying to hide in his horse's mane. A roaring, like the winter gales compressed and intensified a hundredfold, swept by, almost tossing him from the saddle.

He looked up, partly to follow the shell and partly to call to his mates. The projectile hit the station near the northern corner, sending stone and metal in all directions.

Annandale wheeled his horse violently away from the station as yet another thud and another blast tore the rest of it to pieces.

The tank halted and followed the fleeing rider with its turret, peppering the ground behind and in front of him with automatic fire, apparently unwilling to waste a heavy shell on so insignificant a target; besides, Annandale was wearing the long fur-lined riding coat of the Plains and the men must have thought him to be nothing more than a lone nomad.

Nearly crazed with fear as he was, Annandale still retained his heritage of fine horsemanship; he fled the burning fort and circled around in back of the tank. He rode for several minutes, stopping on top of a blasted hillock half a mile north of the station. The tank still sat there, its evil hide undulating in the leaping of electrical sparks. It lobbed a third shell into the ruins and then finally moved forward; small geysers of dust spouted where its light batteries raked over the wreckage.

The vehicle plowed into the station, shoving rubble from the hill. Once the hill was cleared, the tank circled and its men began rigging a crane on its rear deck; they started to rebuild the station, even then. The only trace of his companions that Annandale could detect was the severed, maimed head of a horse that one of the Armories' men had thrown from the hill; the dawn, just beginning, caught the bloody object and made it seem to sparkle like an obscene, black baroque pearl.

* * *

Annandale reached the Tyne garrison after three days of constant riding, killing his beloved stallion. During those days he had apparently spent much time deliberating on the things he had seen; the man that stumbled into the Government compound was definitely not the young horseman who had left the Caroline. His eyes, which once shone with delight at the smell of wind and grass, loving the smallest facet of life, had turned gray and dull. His frame sagged as with a great weight; a sorrow had descended upon him from which he could not escape.

He walked to the commander'soffice, his Admiralty identification serving to admit him. He told his story simply, almost in a lyric manner, as if the facts that he had discovered had already been cast into a minstrel's song. The commander listened in astonishment, punctuating Annandale's narrative with "you can't be serious," and later on, "Gods save us."

The commander directed that all the information be sent to the capital, but he was abruptly informed that all telegraph communication had been mysteriously cut off early that morning. A fast power boat was then dispatched to the capital while the quickest galley available was sent to the Yards.

Annandale seemed more weary now than ever. "Sir, I fear that the storm has already begun. I request only a good horse and rations from you—and my gun, if you please—that I may escape from it for a little while."

"But if what you say is true, then I should think your Office will need you and your gun. The Caroline has need of men like . . . " The commander looked into Annandale's eyes. "Where will you go?" he asked.

"Home," the horseman said.

The power boat was taken and burned at Bloody Ford and is, therefore, of little further interest. The galley reached the Yards about a day ahead of time; its courier, a fat little man by the name of Shan, was met at the quay by a worried Techno. The boat put about and started pulling upriver while Shan was taken by carriage to the administration complex on the outskirts of Gateway.

The buildings forming the complex were the tallest to be seen. After mile upon mile of pastel-painted People's houses and shops, gaily ramshackle in construction, it was at once depressing yet refreshing to see the black marble towers; all but the lower stories were windowless, glass still being a rare material. Gold and silver edging ran along the borders of some of the structures; silver-gray marble formed a main court where a fountain stood. But the fountain was dry—refuse had been collecting in it for quite a while.

Shan pulled his army coat closely about him, the winds feeling unnaturally cold even for early fall. He was further chilled by the interior of the central tower where he was taken; while the buildings were of First World design, the insides were lit by smoky pans of oil, giving the windowless floors the appearance of subterranean dungeons. Electric light fixtures stood at every hand, dusty with neglect. The furniture too was a strange blend of this and past ages: stainless steel desks and chairs seated secretaries working with abacuses and inscribing the figures on parchment with quill pens.

Finally Shan was shown into a comparatively sumptuous office where the current director of the Yards, Amon Macalic, was seated behind an ornate steel desk. Macalic was a perfect counterpoint for the chubby Shan; thin, stooped and irritable, he was often compared to old Trebbly both in appearance and in ability.

Macalic had been in direct and personal touch with the Admiralty, and was fully aware of the hurried studies that were shaking its internal ranks. He often wondered how the Admiralty would get rid of him if it decided that he had been responsible for the
Victory
's growth at the expense of the nation. He knew that the ship had been going up too fast, but he could not have slowed down construction without arousing the anger of the People. Not really his fault, he told himself; he had been told to avoid overt sabotage and merely to use the resources as they arrived. The Admiralty and the Armories were supposed to take care of the rest.