Whatever Gods May Be (42 page)

Phillips pulled a blanket up around his shoulders as a new round of chills took over.  Zolan helped the old man, then returned his gaze to the valley around him.  Thalick and the other two Stingers had carried Phillips and himself to the base of the enormous peak which grew out of the valley floor.  Groups of the giant people began to congregate near them, as the Stingers began to herd most of the tribe away from the center of the valley.

"I think the real reason the Stingers have remained with us for so long is out of need.  They seem to be creatures devoted to work and duty.  Perhaps, in a way we couldn't begin to hope to understand, they actually care for us.  Champions of the eternal underdogs, if you know what I mean."

"And the Dark?" Zolan asked, looking up at the pitch black sky above him.  "What is it exactly?"

Phillips shrugged.

"We don't know.  It's always been there, usually segmented and unobtrusive.  The Thelericks claim that it is killing us.  And after twenty years, I can't say I disagree with them.  We've lost thousands, even with Happy Hour.  The Stingers are not miracle workers; they provide us with stimulants and various antibacterial venoms to keep us going, just to face the thousand and one other different diseases we're so receptive to.  But the Dark's influence is not only devastating, its impervious to any kind of analysis.  And without proper study, no hope of a cure or treatment has ever been found."

Zolan's face twisted in puzzlement.

"You said that this Dark has been segmented before.  What does that mean.?"

"Just that.  Two days ago, the Dark began to do this," Phillips continued, staring up at the blank slab of black above him.  "As a matter of fact, when you arrived."

Zolan's stomach began to knot.

"I don't know why.  I have nothing to do with it."

Phillips face suddenly went grim and white.  "I believe you," he said, allowing his gaze to absently mull over what was happening near the forest.  Only half a dozen men and all ten Stingers were still near the break-off point of desert and valley.  Fires were being lit intermittently along designated points across the ground, extending from the mutant tree growth to the opposite side of sheer canyon.  Within seconds, a line of flame began to grow, creating a smoldering wall between the tribe's valley and the desert beyond.

Zolan remembered the thousands of marching demons flooding the inside of the crater.  This feeble fire break hardly looked adequate to stop such a monstrous force.

"Unbelievable," he could hear Phillips mutter.  Zolan turned to stare at the sick old man now regarding him with renewed disbelief.  Half an hour ago after telling the astronaut who and what he was, Zolan did not hear Phillips utter a word.  The sick man had only mumbled to himself, shaking his head back and forth.  Zolan discovered early in their acquaintance that Phillips was partially mad; he slipped in and out of lucidity every few minutes.  Now, fortunately, was one of the man's more saner moments.

"But I always knew it!" Phillips cackled happily.  "Always knew that we were being watched.  A hundred years you say, eh Rzzdik?"

Zolan nodded obligingly.

"Longer actually, if you count the thousand year probation period before I was actually assigned to Earth.  We discovered your world through the deep probes right when your battle of Hastings was taking place."

"I guess we've gone downhill ever since," Phillips grinned.

Zolan decided to change the subject.

"Tell me more about how you got here."

Phillips' face went sour.  Nevertheless, he sobered suddenly and allowed his eyes to wander upwards, towards the endless Dark.

"I guess we came through that Hall of yours.  At the time, it looked pretty dangerous.  Glad to hear that it was more frightening than anything else."

Zolan looked down guiltily.  No need for details, he thought for no reason at all.

"Anyway, the bombs started dropping below.  We passed out as ALC-117 - I mean the Hall - covered us, and when we awoke –"

Zolan paused, as he sensed Phillips seemed to drift at this point - as if the memories of this particular period were either too fuzzy to recall -- or too unpleasant to recount.  After a second, he finished tersely.

"After Cathy died we were on our own," Phillips said.

"We," Zolan repeated, "you're daughter and yourself?"

"She was so beautiful, my Cathy," Phillips smiled sadly, now hardly aware of Zolan sitting nearby.  "Everyone loved her.  You remember her, don't you?"

Zolan nodded slowly.  He remembered Cathy Phillips from the television interviews.  "Yes.  She was lovely."

Phillips smiled again, and seemed happy by the answer.  His eyes began to flutter, and a second later he passed out.

Zolan watched the old man for several minutes.  He had learned much from his brief conversation with him.  What had happened to Phillips must have been exactly what had happened with himself, and for all he knew, the Thelerick Stingers as well.  The Hall had trapped them all.  And with an entire universe as a crap table, it could have rolled them anywhere in time and space.

My god, what had he done:

Zolan brought his hands to his face in despair.  With one, reckless and self-pitying action, he had simultaneously destroyed the lives of so many beings.  He thought back of Phillips earlier recounting of events leading up to his launch, Cathy Phillips' pregnancy, and the first month after the crash in which his wife was killed.  Had he done as the Rover had instructed, perhaps that poor woman would still have been alive, though probably dying slowly on the doomed, radioactive surface of war-torn Earth.

And what of the Hall itself?

Zolan retortured himself with this greatest of mysteries.  Suppose the Rover had failed to close the breach, leaving god knows how many parsecs of space open to possible annihilation from the warp's rampage.  It was too horrible and terrifying to ponder.

All this had been his doing.  Zolan reached over and pulled a blanket around Phillips' shuddering arms.  He could see that the astronaut was broken all over; how he had managed to survive this long was a miracle, Zolan thought.  Even this poor creature's present condition was in a way his responsibility.  Twenty years of grief and torment under a moonless sky, on a world rampant with monsterdom and death.  Had he been a vindictive god, Zolan considered mercilessly, he could not have been more thorough in creating such widespread misery.

And Valry had asked him to help her:

The thought was almost laughable.  He had done nothing so far; Thalick would have discovered the Redeye attack force regardless of his intentions.  The tribe had been preparing for hours to meet the catastrophe anyway; what little Zolan had contributed in the way of useful information was more than negligible.

A large head suddenly bumped into his neck.  The Birdog lapped Zolan's face as soon as he turned around.  She grinned, panted and wagged her ten foot tail to and fro.  The she barked and moved in front of him.  Her face now steadied on the narrow passes in which Thalick had brought them through an hour ago.

Zolan understood at once.  He stood up and walked beside his furry rescuer.

"I know.  You have to go back," he said, reaching down to a now-familiar ear and scratching.

"Dalka," the Birdog barked in agreement.

He had been on this world for little over a day, yet he had come into contact with at least two beings who had affected his life more profoundly than at any other time he could remember.  The ethereal Valry had given him love; and, in turn, had allowed him to give of himself as well.  The Birdog had given him friendship.  Zolan now found himself again close to tears at seeing the big, awkward animal who had saved him repeatedly wish to leave.  Yet he knew she had to return to her pups; duty was still the strongest force, next to love, in the universe that would not be denied.

Zolan allowed his face to be licked repeatedly.  Then, giving the Birdog a long hug, he backed away so as to give her sufficient room to begin a takeoff.  Still reeling from the Stinger venom, she would have more than enough strength to make it back to the cliff walls in a few hours.  At least she, Zolan thought with sudden grimness, would have a more promising future than himself -- or perhaps any human member of the tribe after tonight.

The Birdog lumbered down the gradual slope of the mountainside.  She came to within fifty feet of Thalick now approaching Zolan, then took to the air.  A moment later, and the blackness swallowed her up.

"Wish we had a hundred like those," a voice mumbled from behind him.

Zolan turned around and found Phillips awake again.

"Never seen one close up before," Phillips rambled, "Didn't think they were so tame."

Zolan smiled and nodded.

"How did you find one so friendly?" Phillips asked, his voice sounding slightly stronger than before.

"She found me," Zolan admitted, wandering back to where Phillips was laying.  "Kidnapped me, as a matter of fact.  And saved my life in the process."

Phillips watched Zolan carefully, his eyes now sparkling beacons of alertness.

"Sounds like my daughter.  She could charm a Redeye, I'm sure of it.  Loves the Stingers, too.  She's the only one they'd ever talk to.  Hell, maybe that's why they've stayed here for so long.  Because of Valry."

Zolan froze, still staring out at the valley and the working Stingers.

"Valry is your daughter?" he asked tonelessly.  Phillips pushed himself up to a sitting position.  His hands were shaking as they reached out to Zolan.

"You know her!" he said through a gulp.  "Please, tell me where she is!"

Zolan turned to face the old man slowly.  His eyes were moist, and he had to remove his spectacles to clean them.

"Yes, Colonel, I know Valry.  But I can't tell you where she is; no more than I could tell Thalick when he asked me."

"But she's alive," Phillips looked hopefully to Zolan, clutching at his tunic.

A very good question, old man.  Was Valry still alive?

"Yes," Zolan once again committed himself to an answer filled with ignorance and hope.  "I believe she is."

This seemed to pacify the old man without further explanation.  He smiled a crooked smile than lay back, his eyes open and staring at the black sky above him.

"She'll come back, you'll see," Phillips said with soft, mad conviction.

Zolan was lost in thought.  He was now reminded of something he had almost forgotten about.

"Phillips, do you know anything about a creature called the Resistor?" When Phillips failed to respond, Zolan tried another approach.

"Valry told me that he's coming.  She wanted to warn Thalick about him.  She says-"

Phillips voice was hushed.

"I call him the Dreamaker.  Or the Voice."

"You've seen him, then?" Zolan asked curiously.

Phillips nodded slowly, then closed his eyes as if he were in great pain.

"No one ever sees him.  You only hear him.  When he laughs.  Or when he builds your dreams and never lets you sleep.  He's everywhere now.  You can feel him, like death.  This is his home."

He was raving again, Zolan half-considered.

Phillips was now whispering:

"I fled him, down the days and down the nights.  I fled him down the arches of the years.  I fled him down the labyrinthine ways.  Of my mind, and through a mist of tears," he finished in a sob.  "Through a mist of tears."

Zolan listened sympathetically.

"No more poems," Phillips continued to babble.  "No more children or barbecues.  And no more flowers," he was not even aware of Zolan's presence again.  "The days of wine and roses are no more.  Man may come and go, but Earth," Phillips paused and sighed, "sweet Earth abides."

Zolan was about to leave and let the man sleep, when Phillips spoke again, this time with almost frightening sanity.

"You'll never leave here, Rzzdik.  I'm sorry," Phillips was suddenly cold and lucid.

Zolan held the other man's gaze.

"Maybe."

"What about your people? Won't they come looking for you?"

Zolan laughed with genuine amusement.

"How? And where would they begin looking?" he asked.

For the first time since their meeting, Zolan believed he caught a gleam of something other than pain-induced madness in Phillips' eyes.  It reminded him of Valry.

"You don't know where you are, do you?" Phillips asked in a way that was almost condescending.

"I didn't say that," Zolan defended.  "Give or take several trillion miles, I would guess that we've come down in the middle of any number of galaxies within ten light centuries of Earth.  Mind you, that's a conservative estimate.  In theory, anyway, the Hall could have thrown us into an infinite maze of individual dimensions.  But I don't think that's happened here.  Everything so far feels painfully three-dimensional."

Phillips eyes filled with pity and understanding.

"So, in answer to your question...no.  Oh, I'm sure that the GCPP deployed a few probes my way as formality, but when it was confirmed that Earth was "war lost", the Rover and myself were declared terminated.  No subsequent search missions would be wasted on a PO casualty.  From their point of view, my mission was completed.  Earth's destruction was a far more effective gauge in the eyes of buerocracy than any report I could have personally submitted regarding your planets suitability for joining us."