The Overlords of War (9 page)

Were men kept in a separate building? Or was the collector interested exclusively in women? That might imply that the person responsible was human: unbelievably perverted, but human nonetheless. An alien—he thought of the beak-faced Urians—would have no reason to specialize in female bodies.

Slowly he returned to the entrance. And suddenly an idea struck him. At once he decided it was the sole logical explanation for this place. They must have discovered a prison camp.

Suppose that somewhere in time or space remote overlords engaged in frightful combat were to assemble hordes of slaves. They would wipe out the peoples they conquered, retaining only, in accordance with immemorial custom, the most physically perfect of their captives. “A fate worse than death”—it looked as though here the cliche had acquired a literal meaning. For the overlords involved in such a war would regard it as a waste of their resources to take any trouble over the care of their livestock. The cost of sheltering, feeding, and guarding them must be kept to a minimum. Besides, history was littered with warlords killed by one of their own prisoners.

So these overlords would have drawn a lesson from the past. They would have obliterated the consciousness of their victims, and when the whim overtook them they would graft on an artificial, robot-like personality. Something of the kind had already been possible by Corson’s time. If these girls had been treated like that they would no longer be capable of initiative, reasoning, or creativity. Their intelligence might approximate that of an advanced ape. But that wouldn’t worry their overlords. One would not seek in a slave girl wit or affection or understanding.

How could anybody be that twisted? People like those would be necrophiles, in the strictest possible sense.

The idea was so revolting that Corson sought grounds to convince himself the Terrestrials had been at least a little better than that in the days of the Earth-Uria war. He searched his memory. He recalled a general who had ordered the execution of thousands of Urian hostages in the first few hours of the conflict. He remembered another commander whom he had seen dancing among the ruins of a bombed city. It had been a human city, but the inhabitants had made the mistake of trying to conclude a treaty with the Urians. He thought of Veran, and the way he had asked for a million men. Someone of his type would scarcely have hesitated to organize something as loathsome as this if he thought he could profit by it.

• Murderous rage possessed Corson for a moment. His
  
• CHAPTER 27
  
• CHAPTER 35
  

Murderous rage possessed Corson for a moment. His jaw lumped, his fists doubled, his vision went dark. He drew in on himself as adrenalin poured through his veins. Then the fit passed, and he simply stood there trembling. Was this the way of the universe, that violence should evermore breed violence? Was the true visage of humanity a mask of blood? Did a grinning demon ride the back of these upstart monkeys, the specter of desolation and death? Was there any means of getting rid of it and becoming something else, something better?

Well . . . Dyoto. He thought of that utopia founded on the wreckage of war, of that world which knew nothing of compulsion and enjoyed a government so stable over six centuries that it did not require an army. That evil aspect of mankind had to be done away with, but not at the cost of violence. How, though, to ban violence without using it? How to escape the fetters of “just wars”?

Antonella had hunkered down in the middle of the aisle, and she was weeping. All the suppressed anger he had felt since she played that trick on him aboard the floater broke away from his mind like a chunk of ice falling from a roof. She was, after all, a human being like himself. He helped her to her feet and took her in his arms, hiding from her the sight of those sinister cells. He heard her sob, and wordlessly thanked her for it

Corson was hungry. He headed mechanically toward the door, as though merely going outside amounted to approaching a solution. Of course, there was a solution, and he was only too well aware of the fact If he had been alone he might even have considered it. Sol-

diers in battle were taught to feed on anything rather than die of hunger. If they didn’t learn the lesson well, they didn’t last very long. And training, rather than instinct, reminded him that they were surrounded by a vast stock of protein. But he could imagine the unspeakable horror he would see in Antonella’s eyes if he explained the price they might have to pay for their ultimate survival.

Back in legendary times there had been a name for those who devoured corpses from a graveyard.

Ghouls.

And it was a matter of historical record that people had done such things, not only during a famine. Corson wondered if the overlords of war might not be cannibals rather than necrophiles. On occasion Mongol conquerors used to dish up the most beautiful of their concubines, with their heads displayed on a golden platter, so that all might see they were not miserly. What one man could think of doing, another might do again.

The door lifted to reveal the green plain, the grass spread out like a bitter carpet, crossed by the straight blue road, and the indistinct shape of the pegasone, contentedly grazing. Corson envied the beast.

Then he spotted something lying on the road, not far away. A bag. Laid on top of it, a metal plate glinted in the milky light which filtered through the clouds. In three steps he reached it. He looked it over closely, without touching it. While they were shut inside the building someone had left these here, intending them to be seen.

The plate bore a message.

For one moment the letters danced before his eyes, and he read:

CORSON, THIS BAG CONTAINS VICTUALS. EVEN EMPTY WRAPPINGS CAN STILL BE USEFUL. THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO MAKE WAR. REMEMBER THAT. YOU MUST GO TO AERGISTAL. IT IS THERE THAT CRIMES ARE JUDGED AND SOMETIMES PARDONED. SHOUT AERGISTAL. THE PEGASONE WILL UNDERSTAND.

Someone was playing a game with them. Escaping, being stranded here—now the bag and the message. If the unknown meddler was an ally, why did he not show himself? And if he was an enemy, why hadn’t he killed them?

He weighed the bag in his hand, then opened it. Inside were a score of combat rations. Mechanically he slung it over his shoulder and reentered the mausoleum.

Antonella was standing there with her arms slack at her sides, her cheeks hollow, her eyes dark-ringed, plainly in a state of shock. But she seemed to have recovered from her bout of misery. The tears had dried on her face.

“We won't die of starvation,” Corson said, handing her the bag. “Someone has thrown us a bit of birdseed.”

Before helping himself, he watched her open one of the ration packs. Apparently she was in normal control of herself again. She tore a water capsule at the proper place, the way he had shown her, and offered it to him. He shook his head, and when she tried to insist pointed out that there were plenty more.

Finally she consented to drink, and he watched her swallow, seeing how greedily her Adam’s apple rose and fell under her delicate skin. Then, sitting on the floor, he too began to eat, drinking in sips and chewing carefully. He pondered as he did so.

According to the message, I have to go to Aergistal—where “crimes are judged and sometimes pardoned.” Could I be released, at Aergistal, from the doom hanging over me?

On the other hand, it had been or would become a battlefield. Not the sort of place he wanted to take Antonella to. But he couldn’t abandon her here. And he did not know in this new universe any safe place where he could leave her.

When they had finished, he collected up the scraps that were left over and looked for a way to dispose of them. Eventually he located a little trapdoor, raised it, and found below a black space from which rose the sound of running water. At least they would not leave a visible sign of their passage here—though his precautions would prove childish if the building were full of bugs, as it might be for all he knew.

Then he made up his mind.

“We’re going to Aergistal,” he told Antonella, showing her the message. “I don’t know what’s in store for us there. I’m not even sure if we’ll reach it.”

He expected to see alarm in her face. But she remained quite calm. It seemed that she had developed absolute trust in him, and—as he told himself sourly—that was the worst of his problems.

He kissed her lightly and led her out of the building and toward the pegasone. Having strapped her in place, he donned his own harness. He hesitated a moment, because it seemed so absurd to shout “Aergistal” as though giving an address to the computer of a city cab. He had to clear his throat. Then, in a voice that still quavered, he called it out.

“Aergistal!”

And the world around them once again became a place of crazy shapes and colors.

They emerged above a broad plain tufted with smoke. The sky was pinkish and across it ran palpitating veins, so unlike anything Corson had ever seen that he shivered. On the horizon, beyond a low but sharply defined mountain range, rose three pillars of mingled fire and ash.

They were descending rapidly. Below, what looked like sparkling insects darted and whirled. Astonished, he recognized armored knights on gaily caparisoned horses. Out of tall grass they charged with lances at the ready. A movement in undergrowth . . . and Red Indians stood up uttering wild cries, letting fly a volley of arrows at the order of their feather-bedecked chief. Some of the horses reared up, and a melee broke out—but already the pegasone’s slanting course had carried them past.

The almost invisible beam of a blazer tore the air. The pegasone shied away from it through time and space. The mountains were in a slightly different position. The plain was barren now and sown with craters.. Dull rumblings arose from it, as solid-seeming as hills of pure sound. But the sky looked just the same.

A movement attracted Corson’s attention. A few hundred meters away a monstrous mass was shifting very slowly across country. Only its geometrical form betrayed its mechanical nature. A tank? If so, it was infinitely the largest Corson had ever seen. A crater like those stamped into the ground seemed to open right in the middle of its near side, but that was illusory, due to a reflection. Corson thought it must be heading toward a low hill nearby, which might conceal a fortress or might itself be a still vaster machine. Hanging on the pegasone’s flank, he felt dreadfully exposed. He would rather have landed and sought a hiding place in this blasted terrain.

Something black and lens-shaped, with a scythe-sharp edge, came spinning from the hill toward the tank, flying a complex curve. It struck the side of the tank as though it were the blade of a circular saw. Huge sparks flashed out. Then it blew up, causing no apparent harm to the target. A bright square patch of bare metal was the only trace of the attack. The tank rumbled onward, impregnably.

Then, without warning, the rough ground opened, giving way like a pitfall under the tank’s weight. Tilting, it spat out forward extensions that struggled for purchase on the far side of the crevasse. But in vain. It tried to go into reverse, slithered, slid inexorably toward the pit. Irises opened on its sides and vomited men, in good order, wearing camouflage netting which changed color to match that of the ground and rendered them almost invisible. They hurled grenades into the pit. Flames and black smoke burst upward. The trap subsided a little farther yet, then was immobilized. But the slope was already too steep and the surface too slippery for the tank to climb out again. Finally it skidded, teetered on the very brink of the pit, and toppled forward, jamming there almost vertically. Its engines, hitherto silent, roared desperately, and quit. A few more men abandoned it and joined the others who were taking cover. A salvo of missiles darted from the hill and wiped out everything in its vicinity, making a solid layer of flame in which men were instantly consumed. The few who did escape vanished into the rugged landscape.

The whole thing could have lasted only half a minute. The pegasone had already left the fortified hill to its left. It flew so low that it had to swoop upward to avoid one outcropping hillock after another as the earth shifted in response to vast unseen forces. At last it landed in the shelter of a crag that seemed relatively stable.

Corson hesitated. He was unable to control the pegasone. So he had to rely on the creature’s instinct of self-preservation and assume that for the moment it had brought them to a place which was safe from attack either through time or in space. Of course, the pegasone might have a very different notion of what constituted an attack than did its riders. It might not bother to dodge an acid gas cloud that could dissolve their space suits. Or it might wander off by itself.

Still, Corson decided, it was worth taking advantage of this respite. He undid his straps and helped Antonella down.

He looked the scene over. Some rocks had tumbled down the hillside and offered precarious shelter at its foot. Taking Antonella’s hand, he urged her to a run. Halfway to their goal he noticed a red flower bloom on the plain. He flung himself to the ground, dragging her with him, and by rolling over and over they reached a hollow between the foot of the hill and the pile of rocks. A missile struck the hillside with a gigantic hammer blow. When the dust settled, he saw that the pegasone had vanished.

“At least that warhead wasn’t nuclear,” he said dryly.

He risked a glance over the surrounding country.

“So this is Aergistal! It looks like one vast battlefield—the father and mother of all battlefields.”

Antonella wiped dust from her faceplate. “But who’s fighting? And against whom?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Corson said. “To me the whole thing looks absolutely crazy.”

You could call this total war and mean it—or so it appeared. An ordinary war implied two sides more or less clearly opposed to each other, a shared or maybe two comparable technologies. Here, everybody seemed to be fighting everybody else. Why should armored knights be charging a tribe of Red Indians? Where could you hide the cities, the empires, which you would need to support such forces and which must constitute the stakes that they fought for? What was the nature of this pinkish and rather repulsive sky, featureless, boasting neither sun nor moon? Even the horizon looked somehow wrong, infinitely far away as though the whole of Aergistal were nothing but an endless plain. But if this was a giant planet, why should its gravity be normal or nearly so?