Lee dismissed Goffism as lunacy and Reparism as stiffing.
Sherret felt his hackles rise at the mere mention of the word “stifling.”
He objected, “I’ve never thought of Reparism as—” He hedged at the word, and substituted another. “Never thought of it as frustrating. I’ve always pictured it as an open road, leading on and up. And you know where you stand on that road, and everyone recognizes your right to stand there. I don’t say there’s not the odd case of nepotism but, by and large, promotion depends upon fair and just examinations, merit, length of service, credits awarded for courage, and so forth. Not upon chance, right of birth, intrigue, the fantasies of crackpots. Your self-respect, and the respect of others, rests solidly on what you’ve achieved. You know what you can become. So you have a goal in life, a purpose—”
“Horrible!” Lee exclaimed. “Unnatural. Life isn’t like that.”
“No. But it ought to be. Who wants to be natural? Nature is merely doodling around pointlessly. It’s a man’s job to give it an intelligent working plan, a design with significance.”
“Damnation, Earthman, I don’t like your plan! I don’t want it imposed on me. I will not be regimented. You think you’re arguing from reason. You’re not. You’re arguing emotionally. Fundamentally, you’re an insecure personality. Like myself. Like Rosala. You need this system to buttress you because you’re afraid to stand alone. But you don’t need just one companion, you want a whole crowd around you to prop up your self-esteem and cheer you on.”
Sherret jumped to his feet, flushed and angry.
“If that’s what you think of me, I’ll show you. I’m going along that pass right now—alone.”
He turned and made to go, but a steely grip fastened on his biceps and pinned him to the spot.
“We made a pact to go together, Earthman,” said Lee quietly. “Are you going to walk out on me, too?”
Sherret was silent.
“Sometimes I think politics are more dangerous than the Three-people,” Lee went on. “Let us go together now, while we’re still friends.”
He relaxed his grip. Sherret turned, a little shamefacedly. They looked each other in the eyes seriously. It was a small moment of truth. They knew, and admitted wordlessly, that they had both been postponing the big, vital moment, that the long discussion was largely an excuse for delay.
“Okay,” said Sherret. “I’m ready. Really.”
CHAPTER SIX
They walked along the valley side by side. The blue had passed into the purple time again, and the place looked unutterably gloomy. Sherret wished the phrase “the valley of the shadow of death” would cease recurring in his mind.
He said, “I don’t like the violet hour. Everything bad seems to happen to me then.”
“I rather like it,” said Lee. “It creates a mood of mystery and poetry. See, the lights are on in the village.”
The little houses in the distance had lighted windows.
The two men walked on in preoccupied silence. The mountain walls on either side had become topless in the purple obscurity. Lee was weaponless, but carried the shield. He knew it was probably useless, but he had made a vow.
Sherret had brought all his traveling gear. He had private doubts that he would ever see Na-Abiza now, but he had made a promise.
He felt empty inside as they reached the outskirts of the village. It had only the single street, and that was completely deserted. To him it appeared pretty much like a village one could find in the southern Highlands of Scotland. Some neat houses on two floors, some bungalows, a few cottages and shacks. All were detached. Each had its small cultivated garden. There were trees planted at regular intervals to form an avenue.
It was very quiet—but so were Scottish villages. Lights glowed behind window drapes, but some houses were dark and seemed empty.
It was the most ordinary-looking place he’d seen on Amara. The purple was too intense, but apart from that it could be an autumn evening in the purple mists of the Trossachs.
Familiar, harmless.
Nevertheless, he found himself fingering the handle of the machete depending from his belt.
Lee noticed. “Getting edgy, friend?”
Sherret nodded. “I’m scared green. Or purple, if you like.”
“So am I. Its all just too innocent, isn’t it? I’m glad we came together.”
They reached the end of the street without perceiving a movement of any kind. The wind which had streamed through this pass not long ago had died to nothing. The air was oppressively still. The silence itself was unnerving. It was as though the world was holding its breath in anticipation of some shattering explosion.
But they could hear the sound of their own breathing.
They turned and looked back along the empty street.
Sherret felt an unworthy impulse to suggest that this was enough, honor was satisfied, they could now leave with dignity. But he knew it wasn’t enough.
“Let’s pay a social call,” said Lee. “Which house d’you think might have ‘Welcome’ on the mat?”
Sherret’s secret little shame bred an -over-compensating boldness.
“I like the look of that one.” He pointed to the largest of all, double-fronted, on two floors.
“I’m with you there,” said Lee.
They negotiated a front gate and a short path to the door. It was a flat, bare door. Deliberately, Lee thumped on it thrice with his great fist.
They waited.
They heard faint sounds of movement within the house, but no one came to the door.
Lee banged again, and shouted, “Wake up in there!”
No answer.
“No,” said Sherret finally. “No ^Welcome’ on the mat here. Probably no mat. Let’s try one of the neighbors.”
“I’ve a hunch none of them’s going to rush out to welcome us.” Lee was beginning to get angry, partly through fear, partly because of what the inhabitants had done to his father.
“Damned pack of murderers!” he bit out suddenly, and rammed his shoulder against the door. Its bolts burst apart and it flew open, revealing a lighted passage.
“We’ll root ’em out,” Lee snapped. “Come on.”
Sherret followed him. They opened doors into two empty rooms, and then in the third and largest they found one of the Three-people.
He was sitting quietly in a deep, hide-covered chair, and looked up as they burst in. The furniture was of good quality and looked to be handmade. Murals of mountain scenery covered the walls and the skins of unknown animals covered the floor. A white spiral of light glowed in the ceiling.
It seemed reasonably normal and civilized.
So did the occupant, who wore an elaborately embroidered jacket and comfortable, fur-topped high boots. He was a frail, oldish man with gray-white hair and a mild, kind face.
He regarded them benevolently.
“My name is Canato,” he said, in a pleasantly deep voice. “It’s kind of you to call. But would you mind leaving right away? I should like to be more hospitable, but you must know of our bad reputation. Believe me, it’s well-founded. You are in mortal danger in this village. Leave the valley while you can, and please, waste no time.”
“I’m sure your warning is well meant, Canato,” said Lee, closing the door but watching the man in the chair warily.
“I can assure you we’ve not come here to waste time. We just want some information. I, personally, want to know what happened to various visitors here from my country. Most particularly, what happened to my father.”
“If your father is not buried in the graveyard just outside of the village, then he managed to get away.”
“He got away,” said Lee savagely, “but at some expense.”
“Friend, you are dangerously angry and vindictive. I implore you to go.”
Lee leant his shield against the wall, strode over and grabbed a handful of the fancy jacket. He lifted Canato by it and growled in his face, “I don’t want advice. As I told you, I w
ant information. Are you going to talk or must I apply pressure?”
“How can he talk when you’re choking him with his collar?” Sherret protested, disturbed by a sympathetic choking sensation himself.
Slowly, reluctantly, Lee let Canato fall back in his chair.
His face suffused, Canato tried to answer but couldn’t recover his breath.
Lee snapped, “Earthman, take a look around the house. I’ll keep guard on this specimen.”
“All right,” said Sherret. He wanted free and easy movement, so he slipped his rucksack off. He started for the door, then paused. Canato had raised his hands in an imploring gesture, making inarticulate noises, striving to speak.
“He doesn’t want you to search the house,” said Lee. “That means he’s hiding something. Go and find what it is—but be careful.”
Sherret nodded, unhooking his machete. He stepped out into the passage. He was glad Lee couldn’t see the way his hands were beginning to shake. He ignored the two unoccupied rooms on this floor, and began to climb the stairs cautiously. He saw that the fights were on upstairs, which was some relief. He didn’t feel happy and was having to suppress his imagination. It would have been more difficult in the dark.
Yet, did the lights upstairs mean that there were people upstairs?
He reached the top of the stairs and found himself looking along a corridor of doors. A strip of light gleamed under every one, and there were six of them. His mouth became dry. Yet again, this was like one of the old nursery nightmares becoming real. The one which centered around something nasty hiding behind the door.
Which door? And what was the something?
He braced himself and kicked open the nearest door.
The room appeared to be empty. There was no reaction, no sound. But there was that hidden space between the door and the wall…
He made a grand leap into the room, and whirled around, machete poised. There was nothing behind the door. Although the light was on, this room didn’t appear to be in use. Some odd pieces of furniture, some paintings and general bric-a-brac were piled against the wall. That was all.
He visited each room in turn. First the screwing up of courage, the kick, the leap, and the anti-climax of the empty room. Only two of the rooms showed signs of being lived in. One was a bedroom. The other, the biggest room of all, was a studio workshop. There was a workbench littered with tools and wood shavings. There was an easel and a little table bearing a. trayful of paints. There were a number of canvases stacked on shelves.
He wandered around, picking up and inspecting pieces of carved wood. They looked like the parts of an ornamental display case.
Then, shaking him to the core, a scream of awful terror came from the lower floor, swelled up the stairs, echoed along the corridor outside. It didn’t sound like a man’s voice. But he knew it was—and it was Lee’s.
A richly carved strip fell from Sherret’s hand. It rattled loudly on the wooden floor in the silent aftermath of that scream.
Snatching up the machete, he rushed outside and down the stairs, hearing strange, gasping sobs. He tore into the room where he had left Lee.
The big man was lying in a corner, sobbing, arms crossed in front of his face, as if he were trying to ward off a murderous attacker. But the only other creature in the room was Canato, slumped in his chair, his face turned away from Lee and expressing infinite sadness.
“Lee, Lee, what is it?”
Sherret dropped on one knee beside Lee and gently forced his arms apart. Lee’s face was contorted with horror, his eyes bulging glassily. It reminded Sherret of Rosala’s painting of himself in the grip of the Melas tree.
Then he dropped Lee’s arms and started back with a cry. For one side of Lee’s throat had been torn out and the blood was pumping out in spurts.
“Oh, my God!”
Sherret beat his knuckles together. He didn’t know what to do. Nothing could close that wound or staunch that flow.
He blundered across to Canato.
“You! Did you do that?”
“Partly. Not entirely,” said Canato in a low, tired voice.
“I’ll deal with you later,” said Sherret between his teeth. “Is there any kind of a doctor in this damned village, anyone who could help?”
“No one can come here. No one can help. Your friend is dying.”
Sherret groaned and rushed back to Lee. The blood was a rapidly enlarging pool. He knelt in it regardless.
“Lee!”
Lee’s face was deathly white, but much calmer. His eyes were still glassy, but now half-closed. A shade of recognition appeared in them.
“It’s gone,” he whispered thickly. “Go, Earthman…before it…returns…Go to Rosala…Give her my love.”
The voice became a faint bubbling sound.
There was a final, choked whisper. “Earthman…» I never knew…your name.”
Then he died.
Although he’d known him but briefly, this was the only real friend among men whom Sherret had made since he left Earth. He felt desolated.
Gently, he closed Lee’s eyes. He continued to kneel, motionless, praying only for control over the murderous anger pouring through, him.
Then he got up and went over to Canato.
“Now, explain this.”
“Do as your friend told you. Go now, quickly. I shall see that he is decently buried.”
“I shall not leave this house until you tell me—”
“All right, but you take a terrible risk. Listen, and don’t question, then go.”
Then Canato went on earnestly, urgently, “My kind have become cursed with a severe mental disorder. A major split in the psyche—no time to theorize now. The body-mind relationship has always been inexplicable; it’s far more complex than we ever imagined. In short, the raw antagonistic side of our nature has split away from us. It exists independently, a disembodied entity. Such things are possible, believe me.
“And now, whenever two of us meet, after a short while the two crude entities fuse and form a third being. This amalgam is real and material, but only in relation to those from whom it has sprung. It is concentrated antagonism, the killer in all of us. It tends to attack that one of us whose baser emotions form the greater part of it…fear, anger.
“Your friend was full of hate and revenge at that time. It helped to kill him. He was terribly frightened, and yet he was brave. He fought the thing with his bare hands.
“You didn’t see it. You couldn’t; it wasn’t part of you. The amalgam dissolved when you came. This sometimes happens when another person joins the group suddenly—it’s as though he upsets a balance of forces. But usually the larger the group, the more power the antagonist derives from it.
“We infect others. Therefore we have voluntarily put ourselves in isolation. My kind are doomed to live and die alone. Each in his own house, keeping his distance, tending his own garden, trying to make some kind of bearable life for himself. Painting, writing, composing, handicrafts. I like making my own furniture.
“But no two of us dare linger together for more than a few—Oh! Go. Please go. I have talked too long.”
Uneasily, Sherret turned to go. But something was forming itself rapidly between him and the door.
“Too late!” cried Canato in despair, and turned his face away.
Fear swept through Sherret like a cold wind. He tried to outflank the darkening, cloudy shape and reach the door. And then, all at once, it leapt into sharp focus like a stereoscopic moving picture.
But it was no recorded shadow. It was here, now, real as himself, and pulsing with energy.
There were traces of Canato in it, but predominantly it was a nightmare version of himself. Every feature was enlarged and distorted as though by some virulent glandular disease. The body was taller, bulkier, and grotesquely misshapen.
The thing was mad and blind and had no conscious control over its actions. Somehow he knew that. It was senseless and without pity. It was an embodied destructive urge.
/>
There could be no appeal and no defense.
The sightless eyes stared at nothing. The mouth hung open like a dead mans. The teeth were huge. There were spots of blood on them.
The hands, with fingers spread like claws, were the hands of a strangler.
This thing had been born in his mind when he was born. It had been created out of the stark fear of strangulation. Always it had lived within him, imprisoned, suppressed, seeking the opportunity to break out into a form of its own. And then—to stifle that other which had stifled it for so long.
Now, in the land of the Three-people, it had escaped at last. Now, here, somewhere, that tyrant was at its mercy.
The sightless eyes turned this way and that.
Then they became still, seeming to stare straight into Sherret’s eyes. And then, shockingly, they became sighted.
Sherret’s mind was swimming as, blurrily, he was transformed into a three-fold personality. He was his fear-stricken, petrified self. He was also the drained out Canato in the chair, keeping his head turned away, trying to see nothing, abysmally unhappy, lonely, despairing.
And he was also—it.
It was just a pair of hands reaching for a throat to throttle to the accompaniment of an hysterical scream. Kill! Kill!
An insensate repetition.
The manifold viewpoint coalesced back to just one—the viewpoint of the hunted Sherret. The thing had used his vision to locate him. And now it was advancing to the attack, its eager hands outstretched.
Sherret reeled back against the wall. The hysterical scream still seemed to be going on, but now it was incoherent, wordless. It was Sherret himself screaming, as Lee had screamed before him.
He was grabbing wildly for security, anything to cling to, as he had grabbed at the grass tufts at the edge of the mud swamp. He clawed uselessly at the smooth wall. Then his fingers encountered Lee’s shield still leaning there. Like a hunted animal, seeking any sanctuary, however inadequate, he squirmed behind it.
Dimly, he was aware he was crouching beside his rucksack on the floor. Then fear-sharpened memory flung up a wild hope. He scrabbled at the rucksack, found the little grenades, slid one from its band. His thumb nail tore off the capsule’s nipple.
The Three Suns of Amara Page 7
