by Andre Norton
When the sun was almost overhead they were in a wilderness of trees where it was necessary to go slowly to avoid gaping cellar holes and lengths of moldering beams.
But in this maze Lura picked up the trail of a wild heifer and within the hour they had brought it down and were .broiling fresh meat. With enough for perhaps two more meals packed in the raw hide they went on, Fors’ small compass their guide.
Abruptly they came out on the edge of the old place of flying men. So abruptly they were almost shocked into dodging back into the screen of trees when they first saw what lay there.
Both were familiar with the pictures of such machines. But here they were real, standing in ordered rows—some of them. And the rest were piled in battered confusion, torn and rent or half engulfed in shell holes.
“Planes!” Arskane’s eyes gleamed. “The sky-riding planes of my fathers’ fathers! Before we fled the shaking of the mountains we went to look our last upon the ones which brought the first men of our clan to that land-and they were like unto some of these. But here is a whole field of planes!” ,
“These were struck dead before they reached the sky,” Fors pointed out. A queer feeling of excitement burned inside him. The ground machines, even the truck which had helped them out of the city, never moved him so. These winged monsters—how great—how very great in knowledge must the Old Ones have been! That they could ride among the clouds in these—where now their sons must crawl upon the ground! Hardly knowing what he did Fors ventured out and drew his hand sadly along the body of the nearest plane. He was so small beside it— a whole family clan might have once ridden in its belly—
“It was with such as these that the Old Ones sowed death over the world—”
“But to ride in the clouds,” Fors refused Arskane’s somber mood, “above the earth—They must have been god-like-the Old Ones!”
“Say rather devil-like! See—” Arskane took him by the arm and led him between the two orderly rows on the edge of the field to look at the series of ragged, ugly craters which made a churned mess of the center of the airport. “Death came thus from the air, and men dropped that death willingly upon their fellows. Let us remember that, brother.”
They passed around the wreckage, following the line of unwrecked planes until their way led to a building. There were many bones here. Many men had died trying to get the machines into the air—too late.
When they reached the building, both turned and looked back at the path of destruction and the two lines of curiously untouched bombers still waiting. The sky they would never again travel was clear and blue with small, clean-cut white clouds drifting across it in patterns. In the west other and darker clouds were gathering. A storm was in the making.
“This,” Arskane pointed down the devastated field, “must never happen again. No matter what heights our sons rise to—we must not tear the earth against each other—Do you agree, brother?”
Fors met those dark burning eyes squarely. “It is agreed. And what I can do, that I shall. But—where men once flew they must fly again! That also we must swear to!”
9. INTO THE BLOW-UP LAND
Fors hunched over the table, leaning on his elbows, hardly daring to breathe lest the precious cloth-backed squares he was studying crumble into powdery dust. Maps—such a wealth of maps he had never dreamed of. He could put finger tip to the point of blue which was the edge of the great lake—and from that he could travel across—straight to the A-T-L-A-N-T-I-C Ocean. Why, that was the fabulous seat He looked up impatiently as Arskane came into this treasure room.
“We are here—right here!”
“And here we are like to stay forever if we do not bestir ourselves—”
Fors straightened up. “What—?”
“I have but come from the tower at the end of this building. Something alive moves at the far end of the field of machines. It is a shadow but it slides with too much purpose to be overlooked by a cautious—”
“A deer,” began Fors, knowing that it was not.
Arskane gave a short bark of humor-lacking laughter. “Does a deer creep upon its belly and spy around corners, brother? No, I think that our friends from the city have found us out at last. And I do not like being caught in this place—no, I do not like that at all!”
Fors left the maps regretfully. How Jarl would have delighted in them. But to attempt to move them would be to destroy them and they would have to remain—as they had through the countless years. He picked up his quiver and checked the remaining arrows. Only ten left. And when they were gone he would have only short sword and hunting knife—
Arskane must have picked that thought right out of his companion’s mind for now he was nodding. “Come.” He went back to the flight of stairs which led them in a spiral up and up until they stood in a place that had once been completely walled with glass. “See there—and what do you make of that?”
The southerner stabbed a finger southeast. Fors picked out a queer scar in the vegetation there, a wide wedge -of land where nothing grew. Under the sun the soil had a strange metallic gleam. He had seen the raw rocks of mountain gorges and the cleared land where the Old Ones had once had concrete surfaces, but this was differ-ent. In a land where trees and grass had reclaimed their own nothing green encroached upon the wedge.
“Desert—” was all he could suggest doubtfully. But there should be no deserts in this section of the country.
“That it is not! Remember, I am desert born and that is no natural wasteland such as I have ever known. It is something the like of which I have not stumbled upon in all my journeying!”
“Hush!” Fors’ head snapped around. He was sure of that sound, the distant scrape of metal against metal. His eyes ran along the lines of the silent machines. And there was a flicker of movement halfway down the second line!
He screened his eyes against the sun, crowding up to the frame of the vanished glass. Under the shadow of the spreading wing of a plane squatted a gray-black blot. And it was sniffing the ground!
His whisper hardly rose above the rasp of Arskane’s quick breathing. “Only one—”
“No. Look within the curve of that bush—to the right—”
Yes, the southerner was right. Against the green, one could see the bestial head. The Beast Things almost always hunted as a pack. It was too much to hope that this time they did not. Fors’ hand dropped to his sword hilt.
“We must go!”
Arskane’s sandals already thudded on the stairs. But before he left the tower Fors saw that gray thing dart forward from under the plane. And two more such lumps detached themselves from the covering of trees along the ruined runway, taking cover among the machines. The pack was closing in.
“We must keep to the open,” Arskane warned. “If we can stay ahead and not allow them to corner us we shall have a fair chance.”
There was another door out of the building, one which gave upon the other half of the field. Here was a maze of tangled wreckage. Shell holes pocked the runways; machines and defense guns had been blasted too. They swung around the sky-pointing muzzle of an anti-aircraft gun. And in the same instant the air was rent with a horrible screech, answered by Lura’s snarl of rage. A thrashing tangle of fighting cat and her prey rolled out almost under their feet.
Arskane swung his club with a sort of detached science. He struck down, hard. Thin, bone-gray arms went wide and limp and Lura was clawing a dead body. A missile from the wreckage grazed Fors’ head sending him spinning against the gun. He stumbled over the body from which came a filthy stench. Then Arskane jerked him to his feet and pulled him under the up-ended nose of a plane.
Still shaking his ringing head Fors allowed his companion to guide him as they turned and dodged. Once he heard the ring of metal as Beast Thing dart struck. Arskane pushed him to the left, the momentum of the southerner’s shove carrying both of them into cover.
“Driving us—” Arskane panted. “They herd us like deer—”
Fors tried to struggle free of
the other’s prisoning hand.
“Lura—ahead—” In spite of the blow which had rocked him he caught the cat’s message. “There the way lies clear—”
Arskane did not seem disposed to leave cover but Fors tore free and wriggled through an opening in the churned earth and broken machines. It seemed to last hours, that crawling, twisting race with death. But in the end they came out on the edge of that queer scar in the earth which they had sighted from the tower. And there Lura crouched, her lips lifted in a snarl, her tail sweeping steadily to signify her rage.
“Down that gully—quick—” Arskane was into the notch before he had finished speaking.
The strange earth crunched under Fors’ boots. He took the only way left to freedom. And Lura, still giving low voice to her dismay, swept by him.
Here there was not even moss and the rocky outcrops had a glassy glaze. Fors shrank from touching anything with his bare flesh. The sounds of pursuit were gone though. It was too quiet here. He realized suddenly that what his ears missed was the ever-present sound of insects which had been with them in the vegetation of the healthy world.
This country they had entered blindly was alien, with no familiar green and brown to meet the eye, no homely sounds for the reassurance of the ear. Arskane had paused and as Fors caught up he asked the question which was on his tongue tip.
“What is this place?”
But the southerner countered with a question of his own. “What have you been told of the Blow-Up Lands?”
“Blow-Up Lands?” Fors tried to remember the few scanty references to such in the records of the Eyrie. Blow-Up Lands—where atom bombs had struck to bite into the earth’s crust, where death had entered so deeply that generations must pass before man could go that way again—
His mouth opened and then shut quickly. He did not have to ask his question again. He knew—and the chill horror of that knowing was worse than a Beast Thing dart striking into his flesh. No wonder there had been no pursuit. Even the mutant Beast Things knew better than to venture here!
“We must go back—” he half whispered, already knowing that they could not.
“Go back to certain death? No, brother, and already it is too late. If the old tales be true we are even now walking dead men with the seeds of the burning sickness in us. Instead—if we go on—there is a chance of getting through—”
“Perhaps more than a chance.” Fors’ first horror faded as he recalled an old argument long ago worn to rags by the men of the Eyrie. “Tell me, Arskane, in the early years after the Blow-Up did the people of your tribe suffer from the radiation sickness?”
The big man’s straight brows drew together. “Yes. There was a death year. All but fen of the clan died within three months. And the rest sickened and were ever weakly. It was not until a generation later that we grew strong again.”
“So was it also with those of the Eyrie. Men of my clan who have studied the ancient books say that because of this sickness we are now different from the Old Ones who gave us birth. And perhaps because of that difference we may venture unharmed where death would have struck them down.”
“But this reasoning has not yet been put to the proof?”
Fors shrugged. “Now it is. And we shall see if it is correct. I know that I am mutant.”
“While I am like the others of my tribe. But that is not saying that they are the same as the Old Ones. Well, whether it be what we hope or nqt, we are set on this path. And there is truly death, and an unpleasant one, behind us. In the meantime—that is a storm coming. We had best find shelter, this is no land to blunder across in the dark!”
It was hard to keep one’s footing on the greasy surface and Fors guessed that if it were wet it would be worse than sand to plow through. They held to the sides of the narrow valleys which laced the country, looking for a cave or overhang which would afford the slightest hint of shelter.
The dark clouds made a sullen gray mass and a premature twilight. A bad night to go without a fire—in the open of the contaminated land under a dripping sky.
A jagged flash of purple lightning cracked across the heavens and both of them shielded their eyes as it struck not far from where they stood. The rumble of the thunder which followed almost split their ear drums. Then the rain came in a heavy smothering curtain to close them in. They huddled together, miserable, the three of them against the side of a narrow valley, cowering as the lightning struck again and again and the water rose in a stream down the center of the gully, washing the soil from the glassy rocks. Only once did Fors move. He unhooked his canteen and pulled at Arskane’s belt flask until the big man gave it to him. These he set out in the steady downpour. The water which ran by his feet was contaminated but the rain which had not yet touched soil or rock might be drinkable later.
Lura, Fors decided, must be the most unhappy of the three. The rain ran from their smooth skin and was not much held by their rags of clothing. But her fur was matted by it and it would take hours of licking with her tongue before it was in order again. However, she did not voice her disapproval of life as she usually did. Since they had crossed into the atom-blasted land she had not given tongue at all. On impulse Fors tried now to catch her thoughts. He had been able to do that in the past—just enough times to be sure that she could communicate when she wished. But now he met only a blank. Lura’s wet fur pressed against him now, but Lura herself had gone.
And then he realized with a start that she was listening, listening so intently that her body was now only one big organ for the trapping of sound. Why?
He rested his forehead on his arms where he had crossed them on his hunched knees. Deliberately he set about shutting out the sounds around him—the drum of the rain, Arskane’s breathing, the gurgle of the water threading by just beyond their toes. Luckily the thunder had stopped. He was conscious of the pounding of his own blood in his ears, of the hiss of his own breath. He shut them out, slowly, as thoroughly as he could. This was a trick he had tried before but never with such compulsion on him. It was very necessary now that he hear— and that warning might have come either from Lura or some depth within him. He concentrated to shut out even the drive of that urgency—for it too was a danger.
There was a faint plopping sound. His mind considered it briefly and rejected it for what it was—the toppling of earth undercut by the storm-born stream. He pushed the boundaries of his hearing farther away. Then, even as a strange dizziness began to close in, he heard it—a sound which was not born of the wind and the rain. Lura moved, rising to her feet. Now she turned and looked at him as he raised his head to meet her eyes.
“What—?” Arskane stirred uneasily, staring from one to the other.
Fors almost laughed at the blank bewilderment in the big man’s eyes.
The dizziness which had come from his concentration was receding fast. His eyes adjusted to the night and the shadows. He got to his feet and put aside bow and quiver, keeping only the belt with his sword and knife. Arskane put out a protesting hand which he eluded.
“There is something back there. It is important that I see it. Wait here—”
But Arskane was struggling up too. Fors saw his mouth twist with pain as he inadvertently put weight upon his left arm. The rain must have got to the healing wound. And seeing that, the mountaineer shook his head.
“Listen—I am mutant—you have never asked in what manner I differ. But it is this, I can see in the dark—even this night is little different from the twilight for me. And my ears are close to Lura’s in keenness. Now is the hour when my difference will serve us. Lura!” He swung around and looked for a second time deep into those startlingly blue eyes. “Here will you stay—with our brother. Him will you guard—as you would me!”
She shifted her weight from one front paw to another, standing up against his will in the recesses of her devious mind, refusing him. But he persisted. He knew her stubborn freedom and the will for it which was born into her kind. They called no man master and they went their own way
always. But Lura had chosen him, and because he had no friends among his own breed they had been very close, perhaps closer than any of the Eyrie had been with the furred hunters before. Fors did not know how much she would yield to his will but this was a time when he must set himself against her. To leave Arskane here alone, handicapped by his wound and his lack of night sight, would be worse than folly. And the big man could not go with him. And the sound—that must be investigated!
Lura’s head came up. Fors reached down his hand and felt the wetness of her fur as she rubbed her jaw along his fist in her most intimate caress. He had a moment of pure happiness at her acceptance of his wish. His fingers scratched behind her ears lovingly.
“Stay here,” he told them both. “I shall return as quickly as I may. But we must know what lies there—”
Before he finished that sentence he was off, not giving either of them time to protest again, knowing that the rain and the darkness would hide him from Arskane within a few feet and that Lura would be on guard until his return.
Fors slipped and stumbled, splashing through small pools, following the route he had memorized as they came. The rain was slacking, it stopped entirely as he .reached the top of a pinnacle of rock and looked out again over the old airport. He could distinguish the bombed section and the building where they had found the maps. But he was more interested in what was directly below.
There was no fire—although his mind kept insisting that there should be one, for it was plain that he was spying upon a council. The circle of hunched figures bore an uncanny and, to him, unwholesome resemblance to the meetings of the elders in the Eyrie. The Things were squatting so that their bodies were only blotches—for that he was glad. Somehow he had no desire to see them more clearly. But one pranced and droned in the center of that circle, and the sounds it uttered were what had drawn Fors there.
