“I understand.”
“I wonder if you do.”
The imitation of a smile played across Sisyr’s face yet again. “I understand,” he said, “according to my understanding.”
“I can’t keep your name out of it,” said the Eupsychian. “I don’t want to cause you any embarrassment. I don’t want to involve you against your wishes. But there’s no way you can stay buried here. Not now.”
“I know,” said the alien. “There is always change. Nothing lasts forever.”
CHAPTER 21
Iorga declared that it was finished.
Joth, for that moment, couldn’t meet the cat’s eyes, but Nita and Huldi took the information as calmly as it was offered.
The hellkin had been fighting for his mate’s life for a time which he knew no way to measure. He would have been prepared to continue the contest for twice as long or ten times as long. He had no real consciousness of what elapsed time meant. There was only the present in his scheme of things, and the possibilities of the present. He did not involve himself with his memory, save when it was pertinent to the moment, and he had no ambitions or intentions beyond that moment.
Just as Nita and Huldi had helped in his fight, so he had helped in theirs. Had they come earlier, they might have turned the fight for him. As it was, he had turned the fight for them, and that was all. The wound in Joth’s back had not healed, but it was not so dangerous now. There was no infection—all that kept him from recovery was the fact that his capacity for bodily self-repair was not quite adequate to the conditions which prevailed in the Swithering Waste.
Now that Aelite was dead Iorga naturally transferred his purpose from the dead to the living. He had united his aims and his efforts with those of the other travelers, and now there were only their aims and purposes remaining. They remained his. Iorga was simply bound into the unitary existence of Joth, Nita and Huldi. He was absorbed into their bond of love. They were four people of four different races, and the circumstances which had conspired to combine them were unusual, but the bond was no less strong for any of that. For man and his satellite species to have survived in the Underworld at all, evolution had been necessary. Natural selection operates two ways: it favors the effective as well as eliminating the ineffective. Love is a force which is favored by natural selection because it leads to unity of purpose, collaboration, and the effective protection of offspring from the rigors of the environment. Evolution in the Underworld had favored love—a kind of love that the people of the Overworld would not have recognized, but love nevertheless. Factors which evolve for one purpose may often serve others, and perhaps the capacity for love which the people of the Underworld had inherited was not evolved to create ties of the specific kind which held Nita and Huldi and Iorga together with the man from Heaven, but such ties could and did form, and such ties could and did work.
Joth felt obliged to speak, when Aelite died, although he knew that the others were possessed of a fatalism which would not allow them to grieve. The same feeling which would not let him meet Iorga’s eyes made him try to exercize his emotion in words.
“The smoke-cloak didn’t kill her,” he said. “You held that in check. You stopped it spreading.”
“She was weak,” said Iorga. “Too weak. All her strength was gone. We could not put it back.”
“It was time,” said Huldi. “Time for her to die.”
The hellkin said nothing.
“Time was against her,” said Joth. “But it wasn’t just time. It was entropy. She just couldn’t hold on to the sense of unity that held her together. Iorga wouldn’t let her die, the smoke-cloak wouldn’t let her live. In the end, she just evaporated. When neither side in a contest will give way, the rope they’re pulling simply breaks. That’s what happened.”
They didn’t answer. For one thing, they didn’t understand. On top of that, it didn’t really matter to them what had killed her. They did not have to explain how and why she had died. It was not necessary to their understanding. But they let Joth talk, because he did need to understand, in his own way. Joth, condemned to confine much of his being to remembrance, belief and introspection, had been the battlefield in a fight for life before, and he could not help but associate this moment with that one. When his face had been destroyed in the explosion, Carl Magner had fought for days, with the only weapons he had—more words—to make them repair him instead of ending his life quietly and mercifully. That battle had ended in life. This one had not—not for Aelite.
“What now?” asked Joth.
“We wait for Camlak,” said Nita.
Joth tried to estimate, in his mind, how long it must have been since Iorga met Camlak. But he could not even make a guess at how much time had elapsed since Iorga had saved them from the crocodilean. There was no standard for comparison, no way to make a yardstick. It might have been days or weeks. The vital question was: where was Camlak now? Where might he have gone? If he were to return here, when would he arrive? Or when should he have arrived?
“He may wait for us, at the wall,” said Joth.
“No,” said Nita. She knew. She was sure.
“He might not be able to find us. In the Waste, he might cross our way again, and never know. We can’t know that he will ever return here.”
“We should go to Shairn,” said Huldi, who obviously had no faith in Camlak’s imminent arrival either.
“We are at the place where he met Iorga,” said Nita. “He will come here. When he discovers that we have come back this way. He will come to this place.”
“Why?” Joth protested. But no one answered.
CHAPTER 22
Camlak never came.
Even so, they did not wait in vain. What would have happened if no one had come, Joth could not tell. In time, perhaps, Huldi’s conviction that no one would come would have outweighed Nita’s dwindling assurance that Camlak would return. But how long might that have taken? Joth did not know. There was no way for anyone to know. Events in the Underworld took as long as it took them to happen. That was all.
But their waiting came to an end when Chemec came into their camp and asked if he might share their food.
They had taken Aelite away from the resting place and abandoned her to the scavengers at a safe distance. It did not matter that they should have her. Joth had buried his father, but that was his way. He said nothing about what Iorga did with Aelite. That was his way. Chemec came to them just as they returned. He was tired and hungry. He was glad to find them, because they had warmth and food. It could not be said that they were equally glad to see him.
“What happened?” demanded Nita.
“We reached the wall—almost. There were Heaven-born. Many of them. Camlak tried to speak to them. Then he fell. I stayed in hiding. I saw them come to take him. They tied his arms—he was still, but I don’t think he was dead. They carried him away. I followed them to the wall. They live there in houses like mushroom caps. They have metal—much metal. Big machines. They took Camlak into a house. The men who took him in came out again, one by one, but there were always others who went in. There were too many. I came away.”
“You were going back to Shairn,” said Nita.
“Yes.”
“You left him to die.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think they’ll kill him,” Joth intervened. “If they tied him before they took him...they must have come down after my father, looking for the truth. Perhaps it’s the men who shot him. I don’t know. But they won’t kill Camlak if they took him alive. He can tell them the truth. Everything they want to know about the Underworld. With his help, they can make the people in the world above believe in the Underworld. But....” He trailed off. But they wouldn’t understand. That was his thought. There was no point in saying it. They couldn’t understand either. Not even Nita, who understood perhaps more fully than Camlak. How could anyone understand?
What would happen when Camlak talked to the men from Heaven? Would they think that the subst
ance of Carl Magner’s dream was true? Would they want to do what Carl Magner had demanded of them? What would happen to Camlak?
“I’ve got to go back,” said Joth. “I’ve got to go back, this time.”
“For Camlak?” said Nita.
“I’ll try,” he said. “I’ll try to return Camlak to you. With all my heart, I promise you. I’ll get Camlak back if I can. Perhaps I can do that first. If I go back instead of him, I can tell them. They won’t want to release him, but perhaps I can make them let him go. I will make them let him go. I might need help. Will you help?”
“Yes,” said Nita, immediately. But Joth wasn’t looking at Nita. He was looking at Iorga. If it came to a fight, Nita would be little enough use. Joth was thinking, at that moment, of rescuing Camlak first and going back to the Overworld afterwards. He needed a fighting man to help him—someone who could take care of trouble. He needed Iorga, who was as big as any man, and as strong. Even Huldi was too small.
“I’ll help you,” said the hellkin.
“And you?” Joth stared at Chemec, who was avoiding his eyes carefully while eating steadily. The cripple looked at Joth, and then at Nita.
“Will you show us where he is?” said Joth. “That’s all. You’re no match for a full-grown man—I won’t ask you to go into the camp. But you have to show us where Camlak was taken.”
Chemec nodded. For a fleeting instant, he smiled—a smile of pure joy. He had killed a Heaven-man, once. Bent-legged as he was, he had taken the skull of a Heaven-born.
It had been a good moment. That was in the days of Yami’s way.
The image in his mind faded almost as it was recalled. The smile was born and died, in a fraction of a second.
“I’ll show you,” he said. “But I sleep first.”
“We all sleep,” said Joth, suddenly taking it upon himself to assume leadership. “Then we go get Camlak back.”
He felt a strange satisfaction at the making of the decision. Underworld ways were infecting him. It was good to have a destination and a purpose. It was good to be committed, to know where—and when—he was. The why of the matter tended to get lost, but he was not so committed to the Underworld as not to know. He did know why. He had any number of reasons. The simplest of all was that Camlak had been good to him. Camlak was his friend. He owed it to the Old Man of Stalhelm to deliver him from his enemies, from those who would inevitably abuse him.
CHAPTER 23
The camp was sleeping. That included Gregor Zuvara, who was notionally on watch. The rotation of sentry duty was regarded as a nuisance by most members of the expedition, who felt that they had better—or at least more interesting—things to do with their time. Hardly anyone thought that it was necessary, anyhow. They had all seen the rat-man, who did not seem a fearsome creature at all: child-size and sleeping peacefully. Zuvara, who had been at least partly responsible for the establishment of the duty, was even more off-handed about it than most. His attempt to stay awake on the night watch had been distinctly half-hearted. (In Underworld terms, of course, they were all night watches. But the expedition was still keeping religiously to Overworld timing.) Zuvara was not expecting visitors.
The attitude of the Overworlders to the matter of security was mildly curious. It was not that they were not afraid—every one of them was fully conscious of being a stranger in an alien world. But their fear did not make them vigilant. They were unsure in their reaction to what they felt. The instinctive alertness which should have been associated with it was not quite gone, but their instincts were unrehearsed, blocked out of their being by the i-minus effect. Their fear was not constructive.
Joth Magner, though, had learned the meaning of fear. The i-minus agent had been leached from his body, and he had slept for very long periods after his initial introduction into Stalhelm. He had dreamed, and his mind had learned. Now he knew how to use his fear, how to accommodate and respond to it. When he came from the edge of the Swithering Waste into the camp of the Heaven-sent he moved like a man of Hell. Silently, carefully, balanced on the adrenalin thread of his emotional tension. He led the way, and Iorga followed. They went straight for the tent which Chemec had indicated to them, not even pausing to relieve the sleeping lookout of his gun.
The tent to which they came was one of the largest—a vast plastic inflatable supported on rigidified half-hoops. Its door was inset, with a press-seal and an antechamber. Offset from the antechamber were shower baths connected to giant steel cylinders containing a sterilizing agent. The heavy suits for outdoor wear were gathered in a long series in a second invagination of the inner chamber. Joth and Iorga came through easily, leaving both seals undone and the flaps caught back, in case a hasty exit became necessary. That they were exposing the men in the tent to possible contamination did not worry Joth. Indeed, he found a certain wry pleasure in the idea. He had been pitched into the Underworld without protective clothing, with no face-mask or gloves, and he had survived. If these men wanted to get to know the Underworld, then they could get to know it his way, and welcome.
Once inside, Joth searched the tent carefully with his eyes. There was absolutely no sign of Camlak. Neither cage nor coffin. There were four beds in the tent, but three were empty. Joth found this ominous. The man outside might belong to one of the beds, but if two men were missing there was only one place that they could logically be. They must have gone back to the Overworld. Carrying their prize.
The deduction, however, was not enough. Joth needed to be sure. The man who slept alone in the big tent was Felipe Rath. He was sleeping deeply—the kind of slumber which once had been called the sleep of the just. He had been working hard. His bird had gone out and returned three times, each time bringing back long series of film. He had transmitted the pictures back to the cybernet by wireless telephone, and signals had been coming back all day to the mapping deck which he had brought out. The deck had been producing photographs and numerical analyses and maps for several hours. Most of the paper he had been content to pile up for later reference, but he had been unable to resist the temptation to collate some of the maps and get some idea of the kind of world into which he had come. A good deal of the paper was still strewn on the floor beside the deck and around the bunk, but Joth managed to avoid stepping on it and rustling it. He put his hand to Rath’s throat and squeezed hard, letting the pain and the asphyxiation wake the scientist.
Rath’s eyes opened, the pupils recoiling and dilating as they adjusted to the dim light of the single lamp. When he saw Joth’s face he was stricken by terror. It was not surprising. It had happened to many other people under much kinder circumstances.
“Don’t make any noise,” said Joth softly. “I’m going to let go of your throat. But if you shout I’ll cut it.” He showed the terrorized Rath Nita’s small knife. Iorga kept well back, shadowed from the lamplight. It was bad enough for Rath to wake up looking into Joth’s steel face, without having him see the cat as well.
Rath gasped as Joth released him, but did not cry out. His eyes moved away from the metal face, traveling down the length of Joth’s crouching body. Joth knew what the other was seeing. Not a man but a savage half-beast in rotted clothing, covered with dirt, no doubt with a stink that was bordering on the overpowering. But Joth could smell Rath, too. He waited for the look of horror to die from the face of flesh, and for the realization to dawn, if it was going to.
It did.
“I know who you are,” said Rath, in a coarse whisper which was just too loud for Joth’s liking.
“I’m Joth Magner.”
“I....”
“Yes. You know. You never saw me before, but you know.”
“They think you’re dead.”
“I’m not.”
“The grave! It was you. You dug it. It was your father. You met him. Here, at the doorway. He did know.”
Joth put a hand to the other man’s mouth. Rath flinched from the touch, an expression on his face which suggested that he had just tasted—or imagined—something
extremely foul. His mouth closed like a trap.
“Shut up and listen,” said Joth. “My father didn’t know, but that’s not for now. There’ll be time. Later. Maybe much later. For now, I want to know what happened to Camlak. Did he tell you his name? No, never mind that. I don’t suppose you gave him the chance. The man that you took in the wilderness. You know who I mean.”
Rath looked at him as if he were mad. Then the Overworlder’s pale eyes slipped past Joth for the first time, realizing that his assailant was not alone. Joth watched Rath’s eyes widen again. He could not see Iorga’s face, but he could see the silhouette, and he knew that it was not a human shape.
“What is this?” said Rath.
“Keep quiet. I meant what I said about your throat. Not for my sake. I have nothing against you. But if they see him, there’s likely to be shooting. I don’t want that. I want to know where you took the man you captured.”
“It’s not a man,” said Rath, the strain making his voice taut and high. “It was a rat. You must know that.”
Joth shook his head. “Never mind that. Where is he?”
“Harkanter took him.”
“Up above?”
“Right.”
“Good.” Joth nodded, as though he was offering encouragement to a child. “Now tell me where. Exactly. The geographical location.”
Rath’s eyes flared. “I don’t know! Harkanter...maybe his house, at least to start with...but I don’t know.”
“All right,” said Joth, smoothly. “Don’t panic. This Harkanter. His first name?”
“Randal.”
“I can find him. That’s fine. Now something else. Who killed my father?”
For a moment, Rath could find no words. It was completely unexpected. He didn’t know what kind of a reply to give. From the midst of his confusion emerged the realization that Joth thought the expedition might be connected with the assassination.
A Vision of Hell: The Realms of Tartarus, Book Two Page 9
