The D’neeran Factor (119 page)

“Behind the wall,” he said. “Where they couldn't go before. Of course.”

*   *   *

When they came closer to the wall, they saw that all the gates were open like cavernous mouths. They walked beside it for a long time, looking through the gates at intervals.
There was only more of the wet dark in there. Michael blessed the rain, which kept people in who might otherwise have come out; but a scene rose up before his eyes, another possibility. That was a fragrant spring evening under clear skies—and still the street was empty, no foot trod it but his, and ghosts grinned from the gates with the faces of skulls.

“We have to go in sometime,” Shen said.

Hanna said, “Not without scouting. We're lucky there's no one around.”

There isn't anybody anywhere!
Michael thought. But Hanna said, “Oh, yes, there are people in there. But where's B? That's what I want to know before I walk in blind. The
Avalon
didn't show up on
GeeGee
's visuals. Why not? Where'd he put it?”

“They'll be looking for us real soon,” Shen said.

Hanna nodded and Michael said, “How do you get that?”

“Henrik,” Shen said. “Gone how long? Theo didn't know. Gets to Orne tonight, maybe takes that truck—could be right behind us. Get in, get out before he comes.” The last words sounded final. She said to Hanna, ignoring Michael, “Go in now.”

Hanna said thoughtfully, “We could wait for him. Go back to the road we came in on and get him when he comes.”

“And do what when we have him?” Michael said.

Shen said, “Pointblank stun to the brain.”

Hanna said, “If that doesn't do it, bare hands.”

He looked at the guardian shadows in disbelief. They looked back and Hanna said, “All right.”

“Guess not,” Shen said. “Move fast, then.”

“Up there,” Hanna said, pointing. “That gate.”

“Then?” Shen said.

“Straight back, straight east, toward the sea. No, we're near the middle, aren't we? We haven't seen any lights. We'll try a diagonal, then, toward the southeast. We'll cover more territory that way. Does anybody remember how the lights were distributed?”

“On record,” Shen said. “Call Theo.”

But Michael said, “Never mind. There was a cluster in that direction. That's what we flew over first, coming in. I remember—”

He didn't finish.
Because that's the way Alban took me my first night here.

Hanna might have heard it anyway, but she said nothing. They walked on to the gate.

*   *   *

Stumbling through courtyards: they did not want to show a light. The sunken gardens were ponds. Hanna walked into one, fell, rose soaked and bruised, knowing she was lucky to have no broken bones. After that they had to risk light.

The dark mansions were all connected. Michael had not forgotten that. But for the first time he knew why, saw the builders, or maybe the image came to him from Hanna. It had been strange and frightening here, a new world unconnected to anything the masters had known before, so they had huddled together, building passages and tunnels so they would never be out of reach or separated from one another—

They found an unlocked door at once. Were there any locked doors left in this place, on this whole world? What was left to guard?

Michael thought he heard a whisper as he stepped inside:
Mikhail!—
a summons. Not Hanna's voice, not her thought. A product of imagination, then.

Now they had to use the light, because the dark inside was so thick that it seemed material, could envelop and smother them, if they wandered out of the circle of light. They were in a great hall, empty except for a thick carpet running its length. Their feet stirred puffs of dust. Hanna led them, light in one hand, weapon in the other. Michael followed blindly, and Shen was at his back. The first hall led into another and another, and that into dark rooms. There was nothing in them to see, they were empty as if no one had ever lived in them. Everything was gone. Here and there an ornament remained, glass or metal or stone; nothing else. Presently Michael realized, without knowing how he reached the conclusion, that everything that could be burned had been taken away for fuel. Even walls not made of stone were gone, even floors; the light saved them from falling into black pits. There was a smell of dust, the air was thick with it, it got into their noses and made them sneeze, so that they abandoned the instinctive attempt to walk in silence. The corners were heavy with cobwebs. And there
were sounds. Rats were masters of these rooms. Also the wind had risen; or did he imagine that? He heard it, anyhow: howling round rooftops and corners till the howls turned to distant screams, and the scurryings inside walls turned to chuckles.

They might have been going in circles, but Hanna never stopped, or even hesitated. He could not imagine what compass had its home in her head. Or was there no compass at all? Was it only that she trusted her zigzag course would lead them somewhere? Left then right, left, right—she went on steadily. But it was odd that they never were outside, never passed into an open courtyard. They might as well have been underground.

He kept following the steady light while the wind and the rats tore at his ears, the screams got louder, the endless chuckle swelled to laughter, an uproar of mirth. So this was what he had dreamed of, what he had had to find. The passion for freedom was wasted. There were no masters left—save one; Chaos ruled here.

The sunlit place where aliens had told him about that Master was gone. He could not remember the sun.

If I had not been self-seeking, self-protecting
—

Hanna stopped suddenly, and he bumped into her. He put his arms around her from behind, holding on. She whispered, “I heard something,” and turned the light off. Michael only heard screams; they were louder in the dark. But his eyes adjusted and it was not perfectly black. There was a glow ahead.

Hanna stepped out of his arms. She put away the stunner she held and gave the light to Shen. “Wait,” she said, and walked toward the light.

The old gaslight fixtures still worked. Gas burned in a fireplace, too, with a steady subliminal roar, in a row of tiny jets that looked like teeth. There were cooking pots at the fire, a pile of blankets in front of it. An old man sat on the blankets and looked up from hollow eyes.

Travelers,
Hanna said, and spoke her piece; told the old man about Michael, half-truths.
He lived here as a boy and seeks old friends.

Dead, most like.

His name was Conwy, he told her. Only half her mind
was on what he said. The other half was on B. She did not know how to ask this Conwy about B, not without rousing more interest than she wanted to rouse.

Three of us. May we
—?

I have little to eat, but it is yours
—

She walked back to Michael and Shen and saw that Michael was far away, farther away than he had ever been in trance or memory. He was in shock, she thought dispassionately. His face, which would be the pattern of beauty for her all the rest of her life, was bewildered. Shen had seen it, too. Hanna did not say anything to Shen about what the two of them must do. Shen already knew. There were two of them to think; that would have to be enough.

*   *   *

A dream. He remembered feeling like this before sometimes—when he was saturated with drink or drugs, and nothing that happened was connected to anything else, and faces were phantasms that came out of air and went back into it, and every phrase uttered by every voice was significant, masking a secret that in a minute, just a minute, he would understand. It was stupid, not to be able to understand.

Here was a lean old face with sunken cheeks. “I lived in the barracks in those years,” Conwy said, “in Zed-Alpha-Eight. I had a wife. I had a child. Two other children were born dead. Now my wife and the child who lived, they are dead, too.”

Croft,
Michael heard himself say.
Sutherland,
he said.

Conwy had not heard of them. He had not known a woman called Kia.

“Dead, so many dead,” he said.

“This time?” Michael was learning. The smell of the gas was strong, it must be full of impurities.

“Every time. This is the fourth, and the worst. Finished, some say. I don't know. No doubt it will come again.”

The shadows in the room jiggled at a draft. They were all Michael could see. He heard Hanna murmur questions, Conwy answering. Conwy knew a man, old like himself, who had been a musician once.

“Take us there,” Hanna said.

“He will be sleeping,” Conwy said.

“I know.” She knelt at Conwy's side and smiled at him. She was not hard now. She was softened, and the softness
was real, not deceit, and when she smiled even Marin would have thought her beautiful.

“Well, then, we will make him wake up,” Conwy said.

And it was not far, and the man at the end of the path was Norn, bald now, with deep eyes under heavy brows. Michael recognized him, and wept.

*   *   *

Hanna squatted side by side with Shen. Shen whispered, “Past the middle of the night.”

“I know.”

“Where's B?”

“Maybe this one knows.”

“Wouldn't count on longer than dawn.”

“No.”

Shen inched closer. She said, “What's wrong with Mike?”

Hanna said calmly, “He'll be all right.”

“Never seen this.”

“I have.”

“All right. All right. Look, he's different. Not like anybody else. I know that. Think I don't know that? Never seen this, though. Gotta get him out of here.”

“In a while.”

Shen did not find this satisfactory. She retreated into sullen silence, fingering her stunner. It would not be good enough if B caught up with them.

Norn in rags was enthroned on a magnificent chair. “I was not there, but I heard,” he said. “There was nothing left but burnt bones. There were three of them, yes, three piles of smoked bones. I heard they were kind to Kia, that after what they did she would not have walked again, nor sung, and killing her was kind. I heard Alban was there, and died, too, and the visitor, the woman Lillin, your mother. Did you hope she had escaped?”

“No.” On the ship without a name Michael had heard too much about Lillin's death. He had never hoped it was a lie. The details had been too cruelly clear.

“The babe lived,” Norn said.

“Lived…”

“Oh, yes. Snatched out living at the last by one of those who killed her mother. I did not know the man. But evidently there were some things he could not do, and leaving the child in that house, knowing the fire would be next, was
a thing he could not stand for. He handed her to the first woman he saw in the street. Ercole; do you remember Ercole? She is dead now.”

“I do not—no, perhaps I do. What happened then to the child?”

“Why, I do not know for a certainty. Ercole kept her a time, though the winter was lean. There has not been a winter of such thinness in my lifetime, not even the last, though the one that comes now will starve us all. Ercole kept her until a man and woman came seeking you and your mother and the babe.”

“When? Who were they? Where did they go?”

“Slowly, slowly. It was a long time ago. With Kia gone I had no reason to go to that part of the town, you understand? I do not remember what else I heard. It is too long ago. Why did you wait so long to come back? They said Tistou took you away; where have you been?”

“I didn't know the way back,” Michael said, but Norn looked at him with mistrust, so he said, “There were people, when I was a boy, who thought Tistou came from another world. Do you remember that?”

“Yes,” Norn said. “There are those who think so still. They say he comes from a homeland of which this was to be an outpost. But we are forgotten; that is what they say. When I was younger, I believed the part about the homeland, because surely this world is forgotten, but not that the traveler went back and forth. Now I wonder. He comes and goes, he has the only flying machine ever seen, and he has not grown old, as I have. Did you learn the truth?”

“It is all true. When I escaped from him, I was not here any more. I have tried to find my way back ever since.”

Michael waited for Norn to take it in. Norn scowled and was silent. Hanna said gently, “It is hard to understand. But what Mikhail says is true. We will go back, and you will not be forgotten any more. People will come with food and medicines. But now Mikhail must find his sister, if she lives; and the traveler is here now, is he not? We found this place by following him, but he does not know that yet. If he finds out, he will try to kill us before we can bring help. Do you know where he is?”

“No,” Norn said. He looked at Michael shrewdly. “If that is true, you must have a flying machine, too. Where is yours?”

Michael's mind was on the piles of bones, the weeping child given to a stranger in the street. Hanna answered, “It is hidden, we hope. We cannot allow Tistou to know we are here.”