To Conquer Chaos (8 page)

XV

Conrad was completely dazed by the speed of events after Yanderman forced the insane-seeming promise out of him. A score of times a protest or withdrawal rose to his lips; always Yanderman forestalled the utterance with some point requiring immediate action.

A safe place for them to go, first. Conrad dredged one up from the not-so-distant past—a hideaway under an overhanging shelf of rock on the eroded side of a hill, where he had sometimes taken refuge from taunting children when he was ten or twelve years old. (He had sometimes dreamed of one day taking Idris there, in privacy. That was dead.)

Things necessary for them to take, next. Yanderman’s directions were crisp and rapid. Certain things he chose himself; Conrad would never have known they were important, for he didn’t know what they were at all. A magnetic compass, for instance. He had never seen one in Lagwich.

On the other hand, he knew very well what a gun was. The fact that he didn’t even consider looking for one was due to his assumption that a gun was the last thing the departing soldiers were likely to have abandoned. Yanderman knew better. Intensive searching located several, of which he chose the two best, as well as a bag of ammunition. Conrad was awed when the weapons were handed to him, but his companion allowed him no time to examine them.

“Get on with it, boy!” Yanderman rapped again and again. “The soldiery will be back some time, you know—they’ll regret wrecking the camp, and they’ll drift back when they get bored watching Lagwich defy them.”

“Yes—what
about
Lagwich?” Conrad countered. It was as near as he could come to breaking his given word.

“Do you care?” Yanderman grunted. “You said not any more. And I certainly don’t. Let ’em sweat it out as best they can. Pick up that side of meat over there. I thought I’d never have an appetite again, but I’m getting hungry. And you look as though you never had a square meal in your life “

Obeying, Conrad persisted, “But what’s going to happen to Lagwich? What’s going to happen to the army?”

“It doesn’t matter what happens to them!” Yanderman exclaimed. “Oh—! Oh, I guess the town can stand a siege for a while, and the men aren’t properly officered and we didn’t come equipped to tackle even such rudimentary fortifications as Lagwich has. Maybe some bright character will put a ballista together and toss some incendiaries into the town—smoke the people out. More likely he won’t be able to organise a big enough squad of co-operative men. They’ll drift away, pick up some loot from the camp, or wander to another town and raid it before the people get wise.

“And back in Esberg there’ll be political chaos, and half a dozen would-be usurpers will impugn Duke Paul’s heir and try to confiscate his property and withdraw his titles on the grounds of wilful malfeasance, and—and the
hell
with them.”

He settled an immense burden of salvaged equipment around himself on an improvised harness made from half a dozen soldiers’ belts, and ended, “Right! Lead me to this safe hiding place you told me of.”

That was the point at which Conrad almost turned and fled. The single thing which restrained him was his burning need to know what only Yanderman could tell him: the explanation of the mysterious visions which had plagued him all his life, and which—having believed them to be unique to himself—he now knew were shared by a certain Granny Jassy and any number of other people.

“That’s better,” Yanderman sighed, rubbing his fingers on a tuft of grass to cleanse them of grease from the meat they had charred, rather than cooked, over a clear smokeless fire of minute wood-chips. “Now, Conrad, I’ll ease your mind a little. Pass me that canteen of water, will you?”

Conrad did so. Yanderman sucked lengthily at it and gave it back with a murmur of thanks.

“Yes!” he resumed. “It was sheer sick anger, of course, which made me conceive this crazy plan in the first place—this plan to venture into the barrenland. That was before I knew about you. And then, when you said what you said, all of a sudden the idea seemed less crazy. In fact, it began to make excellent sense.”

He gave Conrad a shrewd glance. “Don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? I can read it in your face—deep down you’re scared stiff of the suggestion. If you had anywhere else to go, any friends to turn to, you wouldn’t be out here in the lee of a sandstone hill with a foreigner whose head is ringing with grandiose delusions!”

Conrad managed a threadbare smile in reply.

“Did you hear from any of our men who had liberty in Lagwich how we worked our way here—how we knew what sort of terrain we had to cross even before sending out scouts?”

“No—uh—I don’t think so.”

“That was thanks to Granny Jassy. And this.” Yanderman caught up the crystal ball and let it swing on its chain. “Take a good look at it. In fact—keep on looking at it while I tell you the story.”

Puzzled, but eager for information and less frightened now he had filled his belly and rested a while, Conrad did as he was told.

Yanderman’s voice droned evenly on, recounting how Duke Paul had decided to investigate the fantastic tales some people told in Esberg, how ideas copied from these tales, which hitherto had never been taken seriously, had proved to work in practice and had given Esberg a complete military ascendancy over its rival cities to the south, how men had gone to dig up mounds and found ruins and relics in incredible quantity, how Duke Paul had then turned his attention to stories about the barrenland and come to the conclusion that it was artificial,
made,
and even now—on the evidence of Rost’s so-called “devil”—must have people within it.

Conrad, his eyes moving back and forth with the unending motion of the crystal ball, found the willpower to voice a foggy objection. He remembered the coming of the “devil” from the barrenland, and the arguments used by the wise men to show it could not be human. Yanderman dismissed them curtly, never varying the swing of the crystal ball.

“Think now about the visions you’ve had, Conrad,” he urged. “Have you seen the barrenland as it might once have been? Have you seen it peopled, built on, prosperous?”

Conrad gave a sluggish nod. All his old resolutions never to share his secret with anyone except Idris had faded away. He was sure Yanderman wasn’t going to mock him, and it meant so much to him to be taken seriously that he let the words stream out of their own accord.

As he talked, the shiny ball of crystal from which he now could not tear away his fascinated gaze seemed to expand and fill his entire field of vision. Dazzling, it blinded him. And then, out of the blindness, something new and yet familiar emerged. The forms were the forms of his old visions, but the detail, the colour, the words were a thousand times clearer than he had ever known them before.

He came to himself with a start. It was growing dark, and the little smokeless fire had gone out. Yanderman was sitting facing him with an enigmatic smile, the crystal ball hidden now inside his shirt.

“Awake, Conrad?”

“I—I haven’t been asleep. Have I?” Intensely puzzled, Conrad rubbed his eyes automatically.

“Not exactly, no. You’ve been in a trance, which isn’t quite the same thing.” Yanderman stretched his legs as though he felt cramp after sitting a long time in the same position; the action informed Conrad that his limbs too were appallingly stiff.

“Then—oh, explain!” he demanded.

“I’ll do my best. As nearly as we were able to work it out, Duke Paul, myself and the other Esberg thinkers who tackled the problem, these visions aren’t simply dreams, but memories which have become available to us in a way we can’t account for. Possibly the time to which they refer was a time when there were simply so many people that their minds resonated together and created a—” He checked. “You don’t understand that analogy, I see. Have you ever handled a musical instrument?”

“Yes, a clay flute.”

“I meant a stringed instrument. You can see the phenomenon clearly there. Well, never mind. Let’s just say that we’re satisfied that these memories are based on realities of the distant past. In every generation since whatever catastrophe undid the greatness of those days, a few people have been born who were capable of describing their visions; from these descriptions word of mouth transmission has evolved a number of folk tales and fables. The recurrence of those with direct perception has kept the tradition from being hopelessly garbled. Granny Jassy was the best subject we’d ever found in Esberg, but I must say that what you’ve been telling me these past few hours puts everything Granny Jassy ever said completely in the shade.” He gave a sober headshake.

“Me?” Conrad was startled. “Do you mean I’m one of these—how did you put it?—‘few people in each generation’?”

Yanderman shivered for no perceptible cause. He said, “I’d go further. You’re not one of a few, but
unique.
”

It seemed that this ought to be a source of pride. Conrad tried to regard it as such, but his brain was still misty with the after-effects of his recent trance.

“Did nobody in Lagwich care about your gift?” Yanderman pressed him. “Didn’t a single person take it seriously?”

“Until a day or two ago I’d have answered that at least one person did,” Conrad muttered. “A girl called—oh, never mind. She turned out like all the others in the end.”

He looked miserably down at the ground near Yanderman’s feet, and for the first time became aware that there was a pile of yellow paper there, covered with close scribbled writing. He gave the older man an inquiring glance.

“Call it the first fruit of my research into your mind,” Yanderman explained. “I made notes of as many of the things you described as I could manage. You can visualise the barrenland before it was made barren, as you know; in two or three more sessions it should be possible to extract from what you tell me the kind of information which will enable us to cross it and survive. Most importantly, you remember the course of streams and rivers. You can visualise distances, too, with impressive accuracy. What I want to prepare”—he took up a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper—“is a map of the nearer part of the barrenland on which we can work out a path involving not more than a few hours’ travel away from water at any point. We can carry food and fuel between us, enough for the whole journey, if we can avoid having to load up with more than a canteen of water apiece.”

He sketched a rough circle on the paper, occupying almost the entire square of the sheet. In the centre of it he put a cross.

“But even more important,” he said under his breath, “is to know what was sited there in the middle.”

“Why?”

“Rost’s ‘devil’, of course.” Yanderman stared down at the paper for a long moment, then grunted and put it aside. He rose to his feet, stretching limb by limb.

“I still don’t see how it’s possible for these visions of mine to be memories of the past,” Conrad ventured. “Or rather I don’t see why they necessarily have a connection with anything real.”

“Don’t you?” Yanderman sounded surprised. “Boy, where in Lagwich would you have got concepts like the ones you describe? I suppose mere imagination could carry the mind from a Lagwich-sized village to a city of a million people. But there’s a gap between anything in your direct experience and the notion of self-controlling machines, of flying through the air, walking to other worlds. As a matter of fact,” he added with a rueful smile, “that last one is so fantastic I’m inclined to wonder whether it’s not an exception.”

“Yes—
what
other worlds?” Conrad agreed eagerly. “Where? Where’s there room for them? And if the world we know is big enough for you to march fourteen days here from Esberg, surely it ought to be big enough for anybody’s taste! Why would they have
wanted
to go elsewhere?”

“For the same reason Duke Paul wanted to lead his army into the barrenland,” Yanderman said. “I confess I thought he was—oh, not exactly crazy, but at least excessively confident. And in one sense he was, for his army deserted on his death, and might well have mutinied even if he’d survived. But in another and more important sense he was absolutely right. Here you’ve had Lagwich existing for centuries on the edge of the barrenland—long enough to get to know the limitations of its dangers if anyone had wished—and you’ve had yourself, born with a gift that provides access to information once thought to be lost beyond recall. Put the two together, as I’m doing, and at once the idea of crossing the barrenland becomes a practical proposition. And it’s ridiculous to hold back from a practical proposition simply because nobody’s ever done it before.”

There was a gap in that chain of reasoning, Conrad felt. But at the moment he couldn’t locate it. He was suddenly drowsy, as though his stock of nervous energy had run dry, and within another few minutes he was stretched on the ground under a pillaged blanket, limp as a child’s toy.

XVI

Yanderman’s air of calm confidence lent Conrad a veneer of boldness. But it remained only a veneer until after the irreversible step had been taken and they were deep in the barrenland—so deep that when they looked back they saw nothing of the green and fertile country around Lagwich, only the dusty rolling slopes and snag-toothed rocks which they had traversed.

And then it sprang upon Conrad’s mind like a lightning flash.
This
was the barrenland—solid ground, very quiet, dead-seeming, but not utterly alien. It had once been like the land he knew, and might perhaps be so again.

Sensing a change in his companion’s attitude, Yanderman gave him a crooked smile.

“Not so bad once you’re in it, hey?” he suggested.

“No, I guess not,” Conrad admitted. “The only thing is, it’s
so
barren it’s not very surprising people haven’t wanted to enter it. I mean there’s nothing to temp you in!”

“There could have been plenty of temptation,” Yanderman contradicted. “The mystery of it, for instance, should have been enough. Lack of guts held people back—and that’s odd in itself, since even your white-livered townsfolk in Lagwich were bold enough in tackling
things
that trespassed on their land.”

He settled his heavy load of equipment more comfortably about him and trudged on. A few paces behind Conrad followed. It was all too true what Yanderman had said about carrying water; even though they had confined themselves to what Yanderman regarded as indispensables they were still immensely burdened, and some of the items were awkward.

Like this gun, for example. Yanderman had explained its working in simple terms, and Conrad had caught on quickly because similar things had cropped up in his visions. But it was a devilish difficult problem keeping it comfortably slung among the various bags, cartons and bundles he also bore.

He preferred the sword hanging from its frog at his waist.

The proof that Yanderman was right about the content of the visions came the afternoon of the first day. They located a stream running south-eastwards which had been marked up in advance in their crude map. Conrad was glad to slake his dusty throat and rinse his sand-eroded feet.

Yanderman, however, was not quite so eager. He chose to walk around on the bank for a while, studying the lie of the terrain. When he returned, it was to beckon Conrad and point out to him some curious marks in the soft ground near the water’s edge.

“A
thing
has been here recently,” he said.

For a moment Conrad suffered a giddying return of the fear which the mention of
things
from the barrenland used to evoke in him. Then his eyes focused on the marks. They were made by strange hoofs in the form of three sides of a square, with a forward projection from each closed corner.

“Then it won’t be bothering us,” he said.

“Why not?”

“It’s the spoor of the
thing
I killed and your lieutenant took to show off in the army camp,” Conrad explained.

“Are you sure?” Yanderman demanded, and then went on before Conrad could answer, “It’s not that I doubt your memory. It’s just that—well, might there be more than one such
thing?
”

“Never since the foundation of Lagwich have two
things
that looked alike emerged from the barrenland,” Conrad declared positively. “Indeed, that’s one of the reasons why the wise men insisted on their devilish nature—what known beast can exist by itself, without others of its kind to help it reproduce? And yet, as you’ve argued to me, this doesn’t fit with their substantial form and the way they can be killed like an ordinary animal …” He shook his head. That problem was still too deep for him.

“Then I guess we can relax,” Yanderman agreed. “But by night we’ll keep watch in turns.” He squinted towards the point where rocks closed in around the little stream.

“If we follow this bank to the bend I’ve marked on the map, that should be a good place to spend the night. And in the morning we can strike virtually due north to the next water.”

The first night’s watching was a fearful experience. Shadows acquired lives of their own; twice Conrad woke his companion in alarm at what proved to be nothing worse than a breeze stirring the dust. The second night was not so bad. The day which followed, however, was the worst part of the trip; according to Yanderman’s map, it was necessary to cross dry ground for a full eight hours to avoid a wasted trip to the east, and at that point the going became rougher—less sandy and much more rocky.

They were at the mid-point of this eight-hour stage when Yanderman, slightly in the lead as usual, stopped abruptly and gave a gasp that turned Conrad’s heart over.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“Look!” Yanderman pointed at a sheltered cranny between two boulders, and Conrad peered down.

There was a plant there—the first they had seen on the barrenland. But it was no reassurance. It did have leaves and stems like an honest vegetable, but the leaves were a blackish brown stained with white fuzz, and the stems were brittle and dry-looking.

“Don’t touch it!” Yanderman warned. “I’ve never seen anything like it, have you?”

Conrad shook his head.

For a little while they remained, studying the curious intruder; then Yanderman sighed and made to move on. “Keep an eye out for any more plants,” he ordered. “If it’s true that there’s an island in the barrenland where people have clung to life, we may get a guide towards it from an increasingly dense vegetation.”

There was no real increase in density, however; only a thin scattering of alien plants, perhaps one in a hundred paces, whose single comforting quality was that unlike the things which moved they did occur in distinct family groups.

The next two or three hours found them scrambling among rocks and plodding down rain-eroded gullies. The sensation was akin to being an ant crawling over a skeleton, and Conrad felt a prickling of the scalp every time he encountered another of the mysterious plants. Yet nothing moved or seemed to threaten them; he forced himself to concentrate on making progress rather than giving way to wild fancies.

Yanderman had just paused to make another distance-mark on his map, and to promise a sight of water within the hour, when the welkin rang with an ear-splitting hoot from a short distance away. Map forgotten, gun swinging to the ready position, Yanderman ordered Conrad to dive for cover.

When long minutes of staring had failed to reveal the creature which had given that appalling bellow—it was certainly an animal noise—he got up slowly.

“I think it’s close,” he whispered. “Perhaps over that rise to our left. Come with me, but move carefully.”

Conrad complied, wishing he could head in the opposite direction. But when they topped the rise and could see the thing that had hooted, he felt ashamed of the panicky impulse.

It was as enormous as its voice, but it was clearly no danger to them, for it was dying.

As long as twenty men, the
thing
lay among boulders in the slanting afternoon sunlight. It had no discernible head or limbs—only a vast massing of bulbous bladders of many hues and all sizes from that of a man’s head to that of a horse’s belly. Between the bladders trailed ragged white membranes, dry and curling at the edges as though the sun were too much for them to withstand.

A wide smeared trail indicated the direction from which it had come: roughly, from the north. By what means of progress? By crawling? That seemed absurd to Conrad—why should such a colossus have to crawl?

Yet apparently that was the truth. For now it heaved and humped itself and tried to move onwards, and the source of the incredible noise was suddenly clear. A sharp boulder struck one of the distended bladders, ripped it, and the gas within came gushing out to the accompaniment of another deafening hoot, leaving behind more of the drying whitish membrane.

“It’s helpless,” Yanderman said softly. “We can leave it be.”

“I’ll be glad to!” Conrad admitted. “What—what
is
it?”

“If it’s true that there are other worlds than this, and the things hail from them, that might have been born on a world of the kind where—” He checked himself, then resumed with a shake of his head. “Where things weigh less than they do here. This is another aspect of the story I’ve never understood. Weight is weight, and you’d think—but never mind. What matters here and now is that the course this creature has followed leads back to its point of origin.”

“You mean we should go that way?” Conrad gasped. “To the very place where the
things
come from?”

Yanderman cocked his head. “Has it only just struck you?” he said with genuine astonishment. “Logically, if we’re hunting for survivors in the middle of the barrenland whose duty is to try and stop the
things
emerging into the world, we have to go where they are—to the middle.”

“I suppose so,” Conrad said. “But I wish …”

Yanderman clapped him on the shoulder. “Bear up!” he said. “Tomorrow afternoon at latest we should reach the centre of the barrenland, and all our questions will be answered. Mark you, for every question that’s answered we’ll probably learn to ask a score of new ones, but that’s hardly to be helped.”

Conrad essayed a smile at the joke, gave a last glance at the dying monster, and moved on.

It was more disconcerting than ever when late that night Yanderman mentioned the possibility of the survivors at the centre regarding strangers with hostility. Again, Conrad had had the information to go on, and hadn’t used it. If Rost and the wise men of Lagwich could argue that a man from the barrenland was by definition a devil, the cut-off community here—if it existed—might feel similarly.

Yanderman had a precaution against that risk, however. He sketched in a line of rocky hills to the east of the centre point, which he had located in one of Conrad’s visions. A detour in that direction, he argued, would give plenty of cover for their final approach, and a chance to sum the place up before showing themselves.

It made sense. But when he was scrambling among the rocks late the following afternoon, Conrad found himself once again wishing he was anywhere but here. His mouth was dry, his feet were blistered and cut, his hands were scratched, his shoulders ached from the weight of his equipment—

And he had forgotten all his discomforts within the past second. Flat on his belly beside Yanderman, peering over a rim of rock, he saw the most incredible sight he had ever dreamed of, far surpassing anything in his familiar visions.

A sort of dome lay ahead, between them and the setting sun, so vast that one had to turn one’s head to take it all in. Gashed and holed, slightly buckled, it was still mind-shaking. Like a super-monster it lay stranded in the sea of the desert, blotched with smears of greenish vegetation, creepers and free-standing plants. At one end there was a cluster of smaller buildings—
buildings,
for all that they were tiny and ramshackle. At the other, so dwarfed by the immensity of the dome, there were …

“Are those people?” Conrad said in a shaking voice.

“Yes!” Yanderman’s answer was equally unsteady, and when Conrad glanced around he was astonished to see that his companion’s cheeks were bright with tears. “Yes, Conrad, they’re people, and it’s true, it’s all true! I was so terrified we might come here and find only desolation, but we were right!”

Conrad stared towards the insect-sized group of human beings again. They were moving purposefully, following a plan, under orders. They knew what they were doing. They must hold the key to the mystery of the barrenland and the origin of the terrifying
things
which wandered out of it to Lagwich … And surely they couldn’t be hostile to visitors from the outside world. They’d know there was an outside—why, if Rost’s “devil” had been a man, that implied they’d even attempted to reach it! What could have gone wrong? He and Yanderman had made the crossing uneventfully enough, but of course they’d had a compass and the aid of his own vision-memories—

He was so lost in thought that at first he didn’t realise what was happening at the foot of the dome before him. Only a cry from Yanderman and the snicking of a rifle-bold brought him to full awareness.

Something had emerged from the dome, from among the jungly green vegetation there, and the group of people off to the left had scattered and run. Something monstrous had come out!

A
thing
twenty feet tall, waving uncountable limbs like whips, shrieking now as though maddened by pain and being driven by some invisible force straight towards the rocks among which Conrad and Yanderman lay hid!