He was a shadow, a nothingness, a shadow, then he stood there again when the light died, my enemy. The chalet was burning behind him and something cried, "Kathy!"
"Frank! Come away!" cried the green man, and the dwarf tugged at my arm, but I brushed them both aside and took the first step toward my enemy.
A consciousness touched my own, then Belion"s--for I could feel the reflex that shrugged off the latter. Then the green one cried out and drew the dwarf away.
My enemy took his first step and the ground shuddered beneath it, slipped in places, collapsed upon itself.
The winds beat at him as he took his second step, and he fell to the ground, causing fissures to open about him. I fell with my second step as the ground gave way beneath me.
As we lay there, the isle gave a shaking, shrugging twist to our shoulder of rock, and it slid and settled and smoke came up from the cracks within it.
When we rose and took our third step, we stood in a nearly level place. I shattered the rocks about him as I took my fourth step; and with his, he toppled rocks toward me from above. Five was the wind and six was the rain, and his were the fire and the earth.
The volcanos lit up the lower sky and fought with my lightnings for the upper. The winds lashed the waters below us, and we continued to sink toward them with each jogging of the isle. I heard their splashing, within the wind, the thunder, the explosions, the constant _plit-plit_ of the rain. At my enemy"s back, the partly crumbled chalet still burned.
With my twelfth step, the cyclones arose; and with his the entire isle began to sway and creak, the fumes coming heavier and more noxious now.
Then something touched me in a way that I should not be touched, and I looked for the cause.
The green man stood on a crag of rock, holding a weapon in his hands. A moment earlier, it had hung at my side, not to be used for the gaining of cycles such as this.
He pointed it first at me. Then his hand wavered and, before I could strike him, jerked to his right.
A line of light leaped forward and my enemy fell.
But the movement of the isle saved him. For the green man fell as it shuddered, and the weapon fell away. Then my enemy rose again, leaving his right hand on the ground beside him. He held the wrist in his left and stepped toward me.
Chasms began to open about us, and it was then that I saw the girl.
She had emerged from the burning building and edged around to the right of us, in the direction of the trail I had descended. Then she had been frozen for a time, watching our slow advance, one upon the other. Now she caught my attention as the chasm opened before her; and something cried out within my breast, for I knew that I could not reach her to save her.
. . . Then it broke, and I shuddered and ran toward her, for Shimbo was gone.
"Kathy!" I screamed, once, as she swayed and fell forward.
. . . And from somewhere Nick leaped up to the edge and seized her outfiung wrist. For a moment, I thought he would be able to hold her.
For a moment. . . .
It was not a matter of his lacking the necessary strength. He had plenty of that. It was a question of weight and momentum, of balance.
I heard him curse as they fell.
Then I raised up my head and turned upon Shandon, with the death-fury lighting up my backbone. I reached for my gun and recalled, as in a dream, what had become of it.
Then the falling stones caught me and pinned me as he took another step, and I felt my right leg break beneath me as I fell. I must have blacked out for an instant, but the pain brought me back to consciousness. By then he had taken another step, which brought him very near, and the world was going to h.e.l.l all around me. I looked up at the stump of his hand, at those manic-depressive eyes, at the mouth opened to finally speak or laugh; and I raised my left hand, supported it with my right and performed the necessary gesture. I screamed as my fingertip flared and his head fell from his shoulders, bounced once and rolled past me--those eyes still open and staring--and followed my wife and my best friend into the chasm below. What remained thudded to the ground before me, and I stared at it for a long while before the darkness sucked me down.
VIII.
When I awoke it was dawn and I was still being rained on. My right leg throbbed, about eight inches above the knee, which is bad--the place and the pain. The rain was only rain, though. The storm was over. The ground had stopped its shaking. When I was able to raise myself, however, I forgot my pain in a moment of shock.
Most of the isle was gone, sunken into Acheron, and what remained was unrecognizable as my handiwork. I lay perhaps twenty feet above the waterline, on a wide shelf of rock. The chalet was gone and a mutilated corpse lay before me. I turned away from it and considered my own predicament.
Then, as the torches of last night"s dinner of blood still sputtered and blazed, befouling the morning sky, I reached out slowly and began removing the rocks that lay upon me, one by b.l.o.o.d.y one.
Pain and monotonous repet.i.tion of an action numb the mind, free it to wander.
Even if they had been real G.o.ds, what did it matter? What was it to me? Here I was still, right where I was born a thousand or so years before, in the middle of the human condition--namely, rubbish and pain. If the G.o.ds were real, their only relationship with us was to use us to play their games. Screw them all. "That includes you, too, Shimbo," I said. "Don"t ever come to me again." Why the h.e.l.l should I look for order where there wasn"t any? Or if there was, it was an order that did not include me. I washed my hands in a puddle that had formed nearby. It felt good on my burnt finger. The water was real. So were earth, air and fire. And that was all I cared to believe in. Let it go with basics. Don"t get cute and sophisticated. Basics are things you can feel and buy. If I could beat the Bay long enough I could corner the market on these commodities, and no matter how many Names were involved they would find all the property registered in my name. Then let them howl and b.i.t.c.h. I would own the Big Tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I rolled away the final stone and stretched out for a moment. I was free.
Now I had nothing to do but find a power-pull and rest until afternoon, when the _Model T_ would come gliding in from the west. I opened my mind and felt one, pulsing somewhere to the left of me. When I felt stronger, I sat up and straightened my leg with both hands. When the throbbing subsided, I cut away the trouser-leg and saw that the flesh was not broken. I bound it as best I could without a splint--which wasn"t very--above and below the fracture, and turned slowly, slowly, onto my stomach and hands and began crawling, just as slowly, in the direction of the pull, leaving what was left of Shandon behind me in the rain.
The going was not too bad, so long as it remained level. But when I had to pull myself up a ten-foot, forty-five degree slope, I was too beat even to curse for several minutes afterwards. The d.a.m.ned thing had been slippery as well as steep.
I looked back at Shandon and shook my head. It was not as if he had not known he was born to come in second. His whole life was testimony to that, poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I felt a moment"s pity. He had come close to having it made. But he had come into the wrong game at the wrong time and the wrong place, like my brother, and I wondered where his head and hand lay now.
I crawled on. The power-pull was only a few hundred yards away, but I took a longer route that looked easier. One time, as I rested, I thought I heard a soft, sobbing sound. But it was gone too quickly for me to be sure.
Another time, and I heard it again, louder, coming from behind me.
I paused and waited till it came again. Then I headed toward it.
Ten minutes, and I lay before a huge boulder. It was situated at the base of a high wall of rock, and there was lots of other rubble strewn about. The m.u.f.fled weeping was somewhere near. A cave seemed indicated and I did not want to waste my time exploring. So I called out: "h.e.l.lo. What"s the trouble?"
Silence.
"h.e.l.lo?"
Then, "Frank?"
It was the voice of the Lady Karle.
"Ho, b.i.t.c.h," I said. "Last night you told me to pa.s.s on to my doom. What"s yours like?"
"I"m trapped in a cave, Frank. There"s a rock that I can"t move."
"It"s a honey of a rock, honey. I"m looking at it from the other side."
"Can you get me out of here?"
"How did you get in?"
"I hid in here when the trouble started. I"ve tried to dig my way out, but all my nails are broken and my fingers are bleeding--and I can"t seem to find any way around this stone. . . ."
"There doesn"t seem to be a way."
"What happened?"
"Everybody"s dead but you and me, and there is only a little piece of the isle left. It"s raining on it now. It was quite a fight we had."
"Can you get me out of here?"
"I"ll be lucky to get myself out of here--the condition I"m in."
"Are you in another cavern?"
"No, I"m on the outside."
"Then what do you mean by "out of here"?"
"Off this d.a.m.n hunk of rock and back to Homefree is what I mean."
"Then there is help coming?"
"For me," I said. "The _Model T_ will be on its way down this afternoon. I"ve got it programmed."
"The equipment aboard.. . Could you blast the rock, or the ground beneath it?"
"Lady Karle," I said, "I"ve got a busted leg, a paralyzed hand and so many sprains, strains, abrasions and contusions that I haven"t even bothered counting them. I"ll be lucky to get the thing going before I pa.s.s out and sleep for a week. I gave you a chance last night to be my friend again. Do you remember what you said to me?"
"Yes. . . ."
"Well now it"s your turn."
I moved myself back on my elbows and began to crawl away.
"Frank!"
I did not reply.
"Frank! Wait! Do not go! Please!"
"Why not?" I cried.
"Do you remember what you said to me then, last night . . . ?"
"Yes, and I remember your reply. All of that was last night, anyhow, when I was somebody else. --You had your chance and you blew it. If I had the strength, I would scratch your name and the date on the stone. So long, it"s been good to know you."
"Frank!"
I didn"t even look back.
--_Your changes of character continue to amaze me, Frank_.
--_So you made it, too, Green. I suppose you"re in some other d.a.m.n cave and want to be dug out_.
--_No. In fact I am only a few hundred feet from you, in the direction in which you were heading. I am near the power-pull, though it can"t help me now. I will call out when I hear you approaching_.
--_Why?_ --_The time is near. I will go to the land of death, and there my strength shall fail. I was hurt badly last night_.
--_What do you want me to do about it? I"ve got problems of my own_.
--_I want the last rite. You told me that you gave it to Dra Marling, so I know that you know the way. Also, you said that you had _glitten__-- --_I don"t believe in that any more. Never did. I only did it for Marling because_-- --_You are a high priest. You bear the Name Shimbo of Darktree Tower, Shrugger of Thunders. You cannot refuse me_.
--_I have renounced the Name, and I do refuse you_.
--_You said once that if I helped you, you would intercede for me on Megapei. I _did_ help you_.
--_I know that, but now that you are dying it is too late_.
--_Then give me this thing instead_.
--_I will come to you and give you what aid and comfort I can, save for the last rite. I am finished with such things, after last night_.
--_Come to me, then_.
So I did. By the time I reached him, the rain had just about let up. Too bad. It had been doing a fair job of washing away his body fluids. He had propped himself back against a rock, and the whiteness of bone shone through flesh in four places that I could see.
"The vitality of a Pei"an is a fantastic thing," I said. "You got all that in that fall last night?"
He nodded, then --_It hurts to speak, so I must continue in this fashion. I knew you still lived, so I kept myself alive until I could reach you_.
I managed to get what was left of my pack off my back. Then I opened it.
"Here, take this. It is for pain. It works for five races. Yours is one."
He brushed it aside.
--_I do not wish to dull my mentality at this point_.
"Green, I am not going to give you the rite. I will give you the _glitten_ root and you can take it yourself if you wish. But that"s all."
--_Even if I can give you that which you most desire in return?_ "What?"
--_All of them, back again, with no memory of what has happened here_.
"The tapes!"
--_Yes_.
"Where are they?"