Orbit 2 - Anthology

by Edited by Damon Knight

  Also—getting back to our parade—there were some youngsters lurking about the fringes of the crowd holding clods behind their backs and waiting for a moment when no one was looking. Perhaps I am wrong in trying to separate these things from the medieval element, however. The more I consider, the more I am inclined to think that the Black Prince or the Cid might have felt completely at home when our gaudy banner was unfurled and the crowd (the whole town had come to see us off) gave their weak, the-rack-if-you-don’t cheer.

  The country through which we passed after we left the village can only be described as a decayed wilderness. The road was a dusty rut which had never known pavement, and there were no buildings more pretentious than squalid log huts. . . .

  * * * *

  We left at first light, the party consisting of myself with a few of my most trustworthy retainers, the Protector with his guards, and one or two servants, the minimum dignity permitted, for we meant to live with the simplicity suitable to those who march against foes more than human. The whole of the inhabitants of the Protector’s strong-house, and many of the more respectable residents of Jana, were early from their beds to see us off; they raised a great cheer as our column left the strong-house gate. Hearing it, I ordered that the standard of the West Lands should be unfurled, and this brought forth a greater cheer still.

  I have often observed since how much friendship the folk of Jana feel for us of the West Lands, and their gratitude for your Supremacy’s protection, though I suspect it might be greater still if it were not for their Protector’s telling them that the tribute is much more than we ask in order to extract taxes from them. Indeed, it might be better if they were directly subject to some West Lands High Justice, who would repay your Supremacy in armed followers to whose maintenance the people could scarce object considering the lawlessness of the country. Would not a vassal with a loyal army be preferable to an inconstant tributary?

  I believe that I forgot to mention, in what my scribe has put into letters already, that by the will of the Protector the mountebank went with us. He is a clumsy rider, and sneezed so much from the dust as to furnish us all with a deal of low amusement.

  The country about Jana is fair enough, fertile valleys lacing the rocky hills and even the uplands supporting swine and suchlike useful cattle in some number, though as we drew nearer the bridge, dwellings failed till even the swineherds’ cots were rare to the eye. When we came the third day to the bridge itself, I saw that the Protector’s boast that the men of Jana had built it was only vainglory, for it is clearly a work of the forgotten age; a thing greater than even the West People could make, and having in it a spirit we could not contrive. This I saw as we paused at the crest of a hill just before the land sloped to the river. Then I saw too something which made my eyes like to burst with wonder, for the vagabond, Dokerfins, had slipped off his mount and was running at full speed down the bank toward the bridge!

  * * * *

  . . . How I wish I could convey to you the thrill I felt when I first viewed that bridge! It is built of monolithic slabs of white stone so skillfully joined that the crevices are difficult to detect even at close range, and it vaults its little river with a fiat curve somehow suggesting an easy arrogance, as though its planners were a little ashamed at having to bridge this modest stream. The carving which covers every surface except the roadway saves it from the severity which disfigures our modern construction. It is deeply incised bas-relief.

  Need I tell you how eagerly I went to examine those carvings? You will not be surprised when I admit that in my single-minded concentration I rushed forward without waiting for the rest of the party.

  I had just begun to scrutinize a large group of written characters about a quarter of the way across, for the moment slighting some pictographic work nearer the bank, when I was startled by a loud thump behind me. Turning, I discovered the native who had taken me as his guest sprawled on his face on the roadway, having apparently been pitched from his mount, which was rearing and plunging in a most alarming manner just behind him. He had not been badly hurt by his fall, though, for he jumped up at once and began gesticulating to me, shouting very rapidly in the native language something about a traki; it was a word I had heard them use among themselves before, but the meaning was not on the tapes. I tried to get him to speak more slowly, but he only became more excited than ever and positively gibbered. I was perhaps ten feet farther onto the bridge than he, and although he started forward once as though to actually seize me, he seemed afraid to go farther.

  Suddenly something behind me grasped me by the shoulders. I tried to turn; but no matter how vigorously I twisted the lower half of my body, the upper half was kept directed straight ahead; I jerked my head about until I nearly sprained my neck, but all I could see was a blurred dark object at the extreme edge of my field of vision.

  Before I could collect my wits enough to think of getting out my paralyzer, I found myself flying through the air and saw the dark water of the river rushing toward my face. I hit it with a terrific slap and lost consciousness.

  * * * *

  ... I spurred after him, and had almost grasped him by the collar (for he would not heed my calls) when he stepped onto the bridge itself and my steed pulled up so sharply that I was thrown over its head and onto the bridge.

  For an instant I lay stunned, then I leaped to my feet and looked about for the wretched fayman. He must have fled, or so I thought then, for he was not to be seen; instead there stood before me the troll. I challenged him to attack me, stamping my foot to show him I stood upon the bridge he claimed. For a moment neither of us moved. I stared at him, wishing to fix his appearance in my mind, so that after my victory, should the spirits of the place grant one, I might tell others his true shape and save them from going ignorant into battle as I had done.

  My eyes have been called sharp by many, but the longer I gazed at the troll the less well could I see him, and although the day was cool the bridge shimmered as the southern plains do when the sun gives a traveler no more shadow than is under his feet. Still, it seemed to me that the troll was a warrior, tall and fell, whose face was more like my own than the faces of most men are. In one hand he held a great sword, heavy and cruelly curved at the tip, and in the other, as a boy might hold a wriggling pup, he grasped the wretched Dokerfins, he looking no larger than a child or almost a child’s doll. I knew then that it was their spirits I saw and not the flesh. Then it was with me as though a blade had opened the veins of my legs; I weakened and my eyes were darkened and I thought nevermore to see the sun. The troll I saw coming toward me with arm outstretched, and his look was not kind.

  When I woke it was in the troll’s den. It was dark and the air had such a filthy odor as the pools in swamps have. What light there was came upward from a pool at the end of the hall, showing that the tales are right in saying that trolls dwell in caverns under the riverbank whose only entrances are under water. When I tried to gain my feet and draw my sword I found I could do neither. My legs had no feeling and my hands no strength.

  I then began to pray as hard as ever in my life to all the gods that are and most especially to the great God who made them all and the shades of the holy men of the north, who might have the most authority in their own country; and I rubbed my hands against my legs to bring the life back.

  One kind spirit at least must have looked with favor upon me, for soon the life returned to my members and I was able to stand. The troll was not to be seen. I bethought me of the treasures trolls are said to hoard— gems and strangely made ornaments of precious metals, shields no weapon can pierce and knives that will carve iron. Indeed, the old tales tell of things greater yet, of magical windows through which one can spy where he chooses and rods whose touch blasts like lightning, but I think these must be lies.

  With such thoughts in my mind I began to probe about the chamber. In a corner I found the skull of one long dead; it had been split to get the brains out and seemed unlikely to have any special power, so I flun
g it away. Where it struck the wall it knocked off some of the foulness and I saw something shine. I cleared a spot with the blade of my dirk and discovered that the wall was faced with a hard substance like polished stone. It had the color of enamelwork, but the tints were within. There was much looking like gold in it and this I tried to pry out with the point of my knife, but the hardest stroke would not penetrate it. The work must have been very fair once; alas, it is cracked in many places now so that the river ooze seeps in.

  In the darkest part of the chamber I found the fayman Dokerfins, lying so still I thought him dead. This comforted me a bit, for I had feared that he had leagued with the troll to destroy me, but now I saw that he was taken like myself. Washed all clean by the river water save where the filth of the floor touched him, he was a pale, piteous thing.

  I was bending over him hoping to find signs of life when I heard the great roaring voice of the troll behind me; so loud and terrible was it that I wished to stop my ears against it. So that your Supremacy may know the troll’s speech I have instructed my scribe to write all his words large; thus your scribe shall apprehend to raise his voice in reading. This trick of clerkmanship I learnt of Dokerfins and like it well though my clerk thinks it gross and mechanical.

  Then said he: “THAT ONE CANNOT AID YOU; YOU MUST FACE ME ALONE.”

  And turning I beheld the troll, but not as I had seen him on the bridge. Here he glowed like the flame of a candle, so that every wrinkle could be seen in the dimness, and his form was that of a great Hunting-devil, but larger yet and higher above the eyes and wearing there a circlet of some metal. He had no sword nor other weapon, nor wore he armor.

  I spoke to him boldly, saying, “I do not fear to face you, but rather think it strange that you who have neither blade nor byrnie should leave me my sword.”

  “I CARE NOTHING FOR YOUR TOOL OR YOUR HARD SKIN—THEY WILL NOT HELP YOU IN THE HUNT WHICH IS TO COME. BUT FIRST TELL ME WHERE YOV FOUND YOUR COMPANION. HIS IS A STRANGE THOUGHT, OR SEEMED SO WHEN I TOUCHED IT ON THE BRIDGE TODAY.”

  “He says he fell here from a star, if that moon-talk is aught to you. As to touching minds, I found the head of one whose mind you touched a moment past, but you do not seem to have done that to my friend yet.”

  I confess, Supremacy, that I was surprised to hear myself speaking of the betattered Dokerfins as my friend, but I find the common occupancy of a troll’s den breeds a strange feeling of comradeship.

  “WHAT YOU CALL MOON-TALK MEANS MUCH TO ME. HE HAS BEEN BROUGHT FROM OUTWORLD TO THE GAMES IN OUR CITY; IT MAY BE THAT WHEN HE WAKES HE WILL SHOW SPORT. THOUGH I SHALL PERHAPS NEVER HAVE THE POWER OVER HIM I HOLD OVER YOU, YET HE SHALL AT LEAST SEE ME AS I WISH.”

  “I shall see you as I wish,” I told him, “and that is dead.“ And I drew forth my sword and came at him.

  I never blade-reached him. Instead I found myself running breathless down a narrow valley with steep hills to either side. It was night, the air moist and cool in my lungs but smelling of smoke, as when water has been poured on a fire. My armor and all my raiment were gone; instead of my sword I held a length of green sapling, and was minded to toss it away when I noted it hung unnaturally heavy in my hand. Then I knew it was not I but my spirit running, and the sapling was my good sword in truth, though seeming not so in the spirit land; I suppose because it was a new-made blade and not my father’s sword I bore.

  I turned then to face whatever might come, but saw nothing and heard only a loud humming as of a swarm of flies. Mounted or afoot, it bodes best to hold the high ground, so I began to scramble up the bank on my left. In the gloom I had thought the hill to be of stones and earth in the common way, but the stones my feet kicked free sometimes clanged like iron or smashed with a noise like crockery. Often too my fingers felt ashes or cloth instead of grass. . . .

  * * * *

  . . . When I became aware of my surroundings again, my first thought was that the impact of the water on my eyes had resulted in blindness. It was several minutes before my pupils dilated enough for me to make out objects, and even then I could perceive only bulky shadows. The floor upon which I lay seemed to be of stone, covered with two inches of almost liquid mud. Even now, Professor Beatty, it humiliates me to recall it, but to set the record right let me admit that during my first few moments of consciousness I experienced nausea, a sort of dizziness or giddiness, and panic terror.

  When I got myself under control I remembered my pocket illuminator and tried to get it out. My fingers were so swollen and weak that I could not unfasten the buttons of my shirt pocket. If you have ever tried to open a jack-knife when your hands were nearly numb with cold you will know how I felt then.

  I was still fumbling with the pocket when a pool of water at the far end of the chamber in which I found myself heaved violently and a creature larger than a man emerged. This, as I learned later, was the traki. I will give you a detailed description of him before I close this letter, but for the present I am not going to let you see more of him than I did. All I knew was that the dank and stinking den in which I found myself had now been invaded by some huge creature, whether beast or nonhuman intelligence I had no way of knowing. I felt that I was about to die, to be killed with a horrible violence, and I could no longer turn away, as I have been in the habit of doing all my life, from the sickening thought of my mind’s termination and my body’s reduction to carrion.

  All of us have encountered a telepathic adept at one time or another, but I certainly did not expect one here, nor had I ever before realized fully the enormous difference between communication with a human Talent and contact with one as alien as thetraki. A Talent has always given me the impression that someone I could not otherwise sense was whispering in my ear while the supposed Talent sat passive some distance away. When the traki sent his signal it was as though a public-address system of enormous amplification and poor fidelity had been planted in the back of my skull, and when he received I felt myself an intelligent insect probed from above by some vast, corrupt intelligence.

  “HOW DID YOU ESCAPE?”

  The question boomed and screeched until I felt I must go mad. Intellectually I am quite convinced (though I know you are not in complete agreement) that our minds are merely protoplasmic computers of great sophistication —that we have no thought or life except that conferred by matter; yet I have never felt so much in sympathy with the so-called “liberal” cast of thought which holds otherwise as I did then. My body seemed a cast, an almost inert but painful prison from which the essential “I” struggled to escape, and while the essence of my being thus twisted to get away it forced my lips and larynx to say that it did not appear to me that I had escaped, and made my wooden fingers continue clawing at my pocket.

  “IT IS WISE OF YOU TO KNOW THAT, WE WHO BROUGHT YOU HERE HOLD ALL THIS WORLD AND YOU CANNOT CROSS THE SEAS OF EMPTINESS AGAIN WITHOUT OUR AID.”

  I was too busy at the moment to digest that rather cryptic statement. I had managed to open the pocket at last and was getting out my paralyzer and illuminator. As soon as I was able to fumble off the safety catch on the paralyzer, I lit up the cavern.

  I promised you a good description of him earlier, Professor, but now I am not sure I can give you one without sounding like the author of a tenth-century bestiary, and no description can make you see him as I saw him, crouched in that dank chamber. Four limbs reminiscent of a gorilla’s arms, but hairless and shining black, were joined to a shapeless, swagbellied body. The head was more nearly human in appearance, a square face dominated by a great slit mouth like a catfish’s. The only clothing, if you can call it that, was a metal band covered with incised hieroglyphics which he wore about his head. I know this description must sound like that of an animal, but that was not the impression he gave. Rather I sensed a monstrous cunning, and most of all that he was old, and tainted with senility.

  I had only time for the brief glimpse I have given you when the traki seemed to turn in upon himself and become something entirely different. It was as
if the entire creature were one of those shapes topologists make which, when turned inside out, become totally unrecognizable. I am still not sure what it was I saw while this inversion was taking place (it lasted not more than half a second) but when it was complete the traki had become an elderly man in a white togalike robe. I hope this will not offend you, but his features had a noticeable resemblance to your own; in fact, during the conversation which followed, I sometimes found it difficult in spite of the painful nature of the thought contact to remember that it was not you to whom I spoke—a Professor Beatty who had grown a trifle strange, and more wise and powerful than I could ever hope to be.

  “SINCE YOU HAVE FOUND A LIGHT, WHICH I PERCEIVE YOU MUST HAVE STOLEN FROM US AS YOUR KIND IS INCAPABLE OF SHAPING SUCH THINGS, I THINK IT BEST THAT YOU SEE ME AS I REALLY AM.”