Eventually I calmed down. There had to be a logical explanation for it. Tomorrow I would find out what kind of disease Lake had. Whatever it was, it seemed to be swift and deadly. I would seek out the surgeon and inquire of him.
Nobody was going to tell me anything, that much was obvious the next day, and in fact it had been clear all along but I didn’t want to believe it. Wherever the surgeon was in the compound, he wasn’t available to me. There was no printed directory, no personnel list, no names, no duty roster anywhere. There was a clinic with a male nurse but he was as detached and vague as everyone else.
“Your roommate?” he said. “Lake? Oh, yes, but I haven’t treated him for anything more serious than a cold. Surgeon? Why don’t you see Dr. Colsan? Or Dr. Suttler? They’re around somewhere. Yes, Dr. Suttler. No need asking me about his pedigree. I don’t know much of anything. As a matter of fact you’re attached to Jolanne. If you have questions, she’s your information source. No, I don’t know where she is until the ward meeting at two this afternoon. If I were you I’d be prompt.”
Grena was just as uninformative when I cornered her in the lounge.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. No, that’s not true, I do know, but it doesn’t matter. There might be a breakthrough and then you won’t be needed.”
“This is silly,” I said. “I’m up here for a reason that everyone ignores.”
“You aren’t alone. My purpose here might be the same as yours.”
“What does that mean?”
“That we develop gradually.”
“Please explain that.”
With a relieved expression she said, “There comes Hallistair to tell me my break is over.”
“Tell him to go away.”
“Let go my hand. I have to get back to my machine.”
I’ll admit that Jolanne prepped me carefully. Every afternoon at two she took me under her glass wing, so to speak, and taught me where my future lay. Always she lit up the image of the grid and talked about it, where the blue line wound, where the girders reared so that there was no walking around them, how the glittering trail flashed and caused the eyes to glaze or roll up into the head. There, see how the, lights shifted from red to yellow to purple and then to gray? See what happened to the pillar or girder there by the blue line? It became obscure, did it not? Almost tenuous? Such a thing was to be ignored. The beam was there and must not be approached, not even if it completely disappeared. The blue line must always be kept in view. It was to be regarded as a trail blazed by brave pioneers.
That night Lake killed himself. He had been restless and surly all evening, casting me black glances as a warning to keep my distance and my trap shut. His empty sleeve was tucked into the pocket of his robe while his good arm swung wildly as he paced about the room. Now and then he groaned in pain or grief, cursed with fervor, sought for something to punish. Wondering if he might decide to pick on me, I stayed out of his way and waited. He was a short, wiry man with brown hair and a big nose, not much older than I. If he attacked me I would wrap him in a sheet and tie him to his bed. No need looking for anyone to help. The halls were empty, all the bedroom doors were locked and there were very few lights lit.
Lake finally settled into bed but not for long. With a cry of sheer rage he bolted from the bunk and ran out. I followed as quickly as I could but it was impossible to catch him. He was one of those people who could fly like the wind when he wanted to, so that by the time I got outside onto the plateau he was already in the act of pitching himself over the edge.
“Why didn’t you take a bird and catch him?” said Colsan, coming out in what I thought was an unhurried manner.
I was too stupefied to respond.
“They were about, weren’t they?” he said, persisting.
“Birds go to sleep at dusk.”
“The jinga are different. They catnap so they’re always about.”
“I’m not an acrobat!” I said, advancing upon him in anger. “The man committed suicide in front of me! What was I supposed to do, grab a bird and swoop beneath his falling body? What do you think I am?”
Staring at me in an objective way, Colsan said, “An odd one, is my guess. It will be interesting to see what comes of having you with us.”
I don’t know if they retrieved Lake from the chasm. Probably not. Maybe no one felt like taking a ride on the jinga. Maybe nobody cared.
Something came through the crack in space while most of the people were in the cafeteria having dinner. Hallistair was supposed to have been monitoring the machines, and maybe he was, but no one knew the thing was coming until the automatic alarms went off.
I was outside on the peaks trying to catch a monarch butterfly with a net and I was the first person to spot the invader. It was a black flying creature with small wings and a gaping mouth from which came deafening screams. The mountain seemed to shudder as it came rocketing between a pair of granite spires toward the building directly behind me.
It entered through an open window and the structure immediately began to shake and wobble in cadence with the creature’s cries. It wasn’t that the sounds were so loud but they were the correct pitch and tempo to set up a tremendous and dangerous vibration or pressure against solid objects. I could hear things inside the building crashing down, which at least told me the direction the alien headed. It was coming my way. In another minute it would be free of the wrecked barracks building.
All I could think of was my father down in Emera. The intruder might not be satisfied just to bring down a few wooden walls. It might get it into its head to light out for the lovely city of glass at the foot of the mountain where its strange abilities would set up an ear-splitting jangle. There would be no city left once it flew over the vulnerable rooftops.
I yelled at the jinga in the sky until, several of them descended to see what was the matter. Back and forth across the rocks I ran until they became confused and began milling. Two of them collided near me so that I was able to grab hold of the one that was shoved downward.
The side of the barracks came down with a crash at the same time that Colsan ran from another building with a rifle in his hands. He fired round after round at the alien as it fluttered toward the abyss. Once it crossed that, all it had to do was plummet down the mountain. Then nothing would stand between it and Emera.
I headed it off. Straddling my jinga, treating it with no gentleness or respect, I kicked it hard and made it pursue the black flyer. Great wings took me to the far side of the chasm where I banked in a turn to meet the alien. It shrieked in alarm or anger before plunging into the depths of the crevasse. I went after it, kicking the jinga, holding him on course and guiding him with one hand on his crest.
He seemed to know what I wanted though he wished to be contrary, now and then attempting to go off on a tangent, which had me white with rage. Eventually he settled down to the chase and followed the alien up and down the sheer walls. They shuddered, those walls, like the taut skin of a drum. Each time the alien voiced a series of cries, the rock rippled and groaned.
The black flyer apparently wanted me to crash against the rocks at the bottom of the drop, but when my jinga ceased to divebomb and followed it up the side of the escarpment, it cried out and initiated a zigzagging escape pattern. Jinga was big but he was also adept. Wherever the alien went, so went he, until we were literally on its tail, zooming past gray granite at breakneck speed, diving downward an instant later, darting, whirling, circling. Our quarry wanted to get away from us so that it could go down the mountain to the beautiful city of Emera. It longed to set the glass to tinkling down there, to make crashing cymbals out of roof spires, to bring down a million shimmering walls, to shatter windows and human bodies.
When I finally caught it in my net I could barely hold onto it. The best way was to cling loosely to the wooden handle so that the vibrations coming one after another didn’t hit too solidly against my hand. After a while it saw that it couldn’t get free that way so it simply began to wail. Up and up I flew with the wind tearing at me, and with the net trailing behind. The alien’s wings were ensnared inside, keeping it prisoner.
Colsan was there at the flat summit waiting for me. “Good work!” he called.
I steadied my steed, handed over the net.
“Wait, don’t go!” he said. “There’s no time for that!”
I didn’t want to know what he meant. I kicked the jinga across the abyss and sent it winging down the slope toward Emera. Too tired to walk from the plains I guided the bird to the edge of the city where I landed on the balcony of a public building. From there I watched the jinga fly away toward the eternal peaks.
My father wasn’t too surprised to see me. “I expected you’d not make it back in three days,” he said. “You’re too young to stay on any kind of schedule.”
“You’re very good at reading me.”
“I wish I were better,” he said to my retreating back.
While I was purchasing items from a wall slot and packing them in a valise, Willmett called to tell me he was suing the drell organization.
“They’re a front for something else,” he said. “I’m certain of it. I’m going to flush them out with a lawsuit.”
“Good luck,” I said. He wanted to continue the conversation but I cut him off and hung up. Finishing the packing, I taped a note to, my father’s door telling him that I was going on another, longer camping trip with a different friend. Then I left the house and caught a train to the northern end of the city.
I was running from Grena, Timbrini and what I considered to be a terrible kind of death. I knew now what was happening up there and I would never go back.
I walked fifteen miles and camped on a barren plain amidst a cluster of rocks. The wind played a mournful dirge for me while I ate dinner. Overhead the sky threatened, and for the first time in my life I prayed it wouldn’t rain. Several hours later it did, falling on me like the fate I desired to escape, finding me no matter where I crawled, deluging me so that I could no longer sleep but sat huddled against a rock with a blanket around me, wishing I were a million miles away.
Sooner or later reality would catch up with me but for those minutes and hours I was a captive of regret and an inward shrinking that caused me to groan in despair. One’s life was occasionally laid on the line but not for a whole city or a world. How dare anyone tell me that I had to be mutilated and killed so that mankind might go on?
Up to this point my body had only been a vehicle. Shivering there in the rocks with my hair plastered across my forehead and with a chill building deep inside me, I realized how much I treasured it. From childhood I had obeyed the laws of health, breaking them only infrequently. My well-oiled machine had stood me in good stead thus far, a house or a transport which I used to accomplish living. I hadn’t really regarded it with any more affection or respect than Sargoth must have regarded his glass shell.
Now I hugged my knees and listened to my heart pound. I was young, strong and healthy, I wanted to live and marry, I desired to perform in the way nature or fate would have me do. I wanted no part of the artificial destiny thrust into my face by Colsan, Falloway and Jolanne. They couldn’t know what they were asking. But then of course they did. Hadn’t Jolanne, Lake, Sargoth and all the drells been proffered the very same choice I faced.
I didn’t care who did or had done what, I was not going back. I would cross the continent to other cities, choose one that suited me and live there until the aliens broke through and did whatever they intended to do. There was a possibility that they wouldn’t fracture the fabric during my lifetime. After all they had been trying for three centuries and hadn’t succeeded.
In the morning, stiff and full of misery, I threw aside the wet blanket and crawled to my feet. Incongruously the sky was bright and cheery, not gray and leaden like my soul.
Colsan had tried to tell me there was no time for me to experience what the other recruits had gone through. They had their opportunity to run and no doubt some had taken longer than others. Now it was my turn and Colsan had warned me that I must make my decision in a hurry. I couldn’t go tramping about in the desert beating my breast and wailing to the heavens because I had come up with the short straw. No time. Hurry. Get it all out of your system and then go and do your duty because you had to do it. If you didn’t, not just one old man but a great many old men would be killed in a variety of terrible ways.
Old women, the young, everyone. The aliens would burst through with their little flying creatures that could shatter glass with their screams, and with all their other creatures, to do what they pleased.
There were no weapons in Emera except for a few guns manufactured for target shooting; no soldiers with the exception of a few benighted individuals born with the capacity to ride birds and confront an incomprehensible weapon. The price of that confrontation was exacted in the form of arms, legs, torsoes and heads; pounds of flesh; disembodied brains.
I was grateful that I couldn’t feel my body as I headed back home. The rain had chilled me to the point that I had caught a fever. Not exactly babbling, I fought my way over destitute terrain while at the same time I cursed Sargoth with all the venom I could muster. My gear, the valise, all the things I had brought to sustain me were left behind in the rocks. If I was lucky I would break a leg and starve to death. Anything at all as long as I never went back up Timbrini.
Today the jinga played well north of the city so that I didn’t get close enough to see the spires. There were dozens of them flitting about, well-aware of me. I didn’t want any of them so I failed to call but soon they were near to the ground and flying all about me. Perhaps they could read minds. Certainly I couldn’t read theirs. If I had any influence over them I didn’t see it anywhere.
They milled and collided near me, raucous and rude, until I threw caution and sanity to the wind and made a running leap onto a feathery back.
They might have been homing birds, since they seemed to know where to go once they acquired a rider. My steed immediately rose high in the air and soared not toward Emera but away from the city to the west. Several miles beyond the spires it diverted south toward Timbrini.
Thirty minutes later I was back where I swore I would never be again, at the barracks compound in the company of a host of drells and people who seemed to be walking stiffly.
I landed in a section I had never seen before beside a squat building that occupied a solitary place near the crack. The clouds were so dense that I was unable to see the metal corridor sitting on a butte and sticking up into the sky. It was the doorway or hallway into the alien dimension. Before long I would become closely acquainted with it.
Falloway escorted me from the plateau to a small empty room. I didn’t see anyone else and I waited anxiously, wondering if Grena bad been told of my return, trying to decide if it mattered whether she knew or not.
A drell came in, walked up to me and stuck out a glass hand. “How are you today?” he said. “My name is Mills Suttler.”
The little finger on my left hand tingled with old pain. I didn’t shake with him. I didn’t say anything either. Avoiding him altogether, I moved to one of the chairs in the room and sat down. No matter what name he chose to call himself, he belonged to my father, bought for cold cash.
“A man can’t be bought or sold,” he said, moving up beside me. He might have been reading my mind.
“You took his money,” I said.
“Because he insisted. He wouldn’t believe that I was willing to come into his household for nothing. The money is waiting for him or you whenever you care to claim it.”
I looked up at him coldly. “Mills Suttler? I thought he died three hundred years ago.”
“I did,” he said. “Will you come with me, please?”
“Why should I?”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” I got up and followed him through a far door into another room that had a dark tunnel where one wall should have been. There was a variety of machinery here, some tall, some low, all glittering and expensive-looking. On another wall was an image of the ever-present weapon that sat just beyond the crack in the sky outside.
Sargoth or Mills Smiler or whoever he was paid no attention to the drells but led me straight toward the tunnel.
“Go on in,” he said.
To say that my heart was in my mouth was an understatement. Here I was and this was it, and what distressed me more than anything else was that no one in the room seemed to think much of the fact that I was about to step into Hell. Not even Sargoth. Mills Suttler. Long-dead educator, figure of state, scientist, man of letters, respected has-been. But I had lived with this glass man nearly half my life and I supposed that some kind of feeling had grown between us.
My rage was a hot ball in my throat as I cast a contemptuous glance around me. Their experiments were doomed from the start. They hadn’t a hope of saving mankind when they held the individual in such little esteem.
I walked past Sargoth into the dark tunnel. “You might not make it,” he said, but I paid him no heed. Naturally I would make it. Hadn’t Fallowáy predicted that I would, even before I was born? Wasn’t that why they sent a drell into my father’s house, to watch the developing recruit and see that nothing happened to him? Until they could pitch him into their devil’s maw?
It frightened me more than I had ever dreamed I could be, but I continued walking into the tunnel that extended for a hundred feet before suddenly narrowing. The metal walls caught the sounds of my rapid breathing and sent them echoing back along my trail. I didn’t care if they knew I was afraid. What did it matter since I probably wouldn’t be coming out again?
I kept walking through the tunnel and suddenly I wasn’t there anymore but was suspended in midair. Still I made walking motions to progress through a thick gray cloud. When I passed from one dimension into the next I was well aware of it. One made total sense while the other did not. One was beloved while the alternative was not.
There was no longer anything solid for me to walk on. Still my feet moved until I stepped onto a narrow girder of light. Ahead of me stretched the grid which I had seen so often since I joined Mills Suttler and his army. Huge and wispy, rugged and yet tenuous, it hovered in space like a many-tiered scaffold. It took up half an acre and through a portion of it ran a thin blue line. I was face to face with the enemy weapon.