Future Indefinite

by Dave Duncan

  Jumbo rolled over. She could not have found a better guide or traveling companion than Jumbo. She wished she knew how old he was. He seemed about twenty-five and yet he told tales of Uncle Cam, who would be almost eighty if he were still alive. She wondered if Edward looked his age now. Trying to imagine the expression on his face when she turned up to meet him, Alice went back to sleep.

  Breakfast was served in a huge, stone-flagged kitchen that could have belonged to any prosperous rural family in Europe. Kettles simmered on the great hob, metal pans hung gleaming on the walls, and the Rancher family swarmed in and out: husky workers, frail old crones, wet-mouthed toddlers. Things that looked like cats snuffled under the table like dogs. Boydlar’s wife—named Ospita or Uspitha or thereabouts—was a red-faced, cloud-shaped woman, who seemed to be everywhere at once, tending children, dropping loaded platters on the table, pushing reluctant adolescents out the door to attend to chores, and talking all the time very loudly, mostly to Jumbo.

  Alice understood less than nothing of what was said. On the first night of their journey, Jumbo had tried to pass her off as his sister from Fithvale, which was a long way away. That ploy had not worked very well, because everyone in the Vales spoke at least a few words of Joalian. Since then she had been his sister who had been deprived of speech by a sickness, and whom he was taking to the temple of Padlopan in Niol to be healed. So Alice communicated in gestures and everyone was duly sympathetic.

  Three children were chased out. Two more appeared, followed by Boydlar himself, all wet and pink from the weather, with his scanty hair hanging in streaks. Ospita made a comment; he laughed and riposted, setting his listeners laughing louder. It was an idyllic scene of rural domesticity. Whatever the evils of the Pentatheon, this section of the Valian peasantry seemed happy and prosperous, and a great deal healthier than any working-class family back in England’s city slums. No world wars troubled them, no clamoring traffic or industrial strikes. If she had to spend the rest of her days in rural solitude, she would prefer the Vales to Norfolk.

  The food she had been given was delicious, even if it did seem to be the illegitimate offspring of an omelette and a meat pie. It was also four times as much as she could eat. While she was forcing down a few last mouthfuls in an effort not to insult her hostess too much, there came a stamping of boots outside. The door flew open to admit a swirl of wind and rain, plus a tallish young man in a leather cloak and hat. The usual jovial greetings flowed to and fro. Then he removed his hat, shaking the rain from it.

  Alice realized she was staring and looked down at her food hastily, only to discover that her appetite had gone completely. The unintelligible conversation eddied around her without pause, so her rudeness had either not been noticed or was being ignored. The newcomer seemed to be conveying some news to Jumbo, speaking in a slurred gabble. Her eyes kept stealing furtive glances. She should have known that every Eden had its serpents—the young man was missing half his face, his left arm, and most of his shoulder too. In a nightmare leer, his mouth reached back to where his ear should have been, showing teeth and parts of his skull. The injury was not recent, but it was very horrible. Not high explosives, not machinery…The only explanation she could imagine was some sort of wild beast, some monster like the bears and wolves that Europe had killed off centuries ago.

  What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.

  Clouds had settled in around the Boydlar house, reducing the ranch buildings to faint ghosts and the scenery to nothing at all. The rain was a steady fine drizzle but not as cold as it looked. Migraine and Apocalypse, who preferred their water solid, were belching and burping in disgust. They set off at a moderate run, but a mile or so along the trail, as soon as they were safely out of sight of their former hosts, Jumbo called a halt for talk.

  “You going to be warm enough?”

  “I shall be both warm and dry,” Alice assured him from within her voluminous furs. “I cannot guarantee that I shall not smell abominably, though.”

  He laughed. “A hazard of the road, my lady! That one-armed chappie was Ospita’s nephew, and he brought news. Your cousin was in Niolvale two days ago, with a large following. Thought to be heading for Lospass.”

  Alice released a long breath. She was surprised how welcome that news was, how much she had secretly dreaded news of another kind. “Then we should meet up with him tomorrow?”

  “We should meet up with him this afternoon, I’d say. Jurgvale’s quite narrow. Yes, easily.”

  “Good!” Nevertheless, Alice wondered how Edward was going to react. She would have to explain right away that she had not come to meddle.

  Jumbo was eying her quizzically. He must guess what she was thinking. “Right oh? Ready to zomph?”

  “Yes…no. One thing. What happened to that poor boy?”

  “Which—Oh, Korilar? From the look of him, I’d say he’d had a very narrow escape from a mithiar.”

  “What’s a mithiar?”

  “Well, that’s the Joalian name. Don’t know the local term.” Jumbo pulled a face. “If you can imagine a ten-stone tarantula, or a black panther with saber teeth and six legs, you’ll be getting close. We call them jugulars. They attack on sight—grab you with their claws and tear you to bits.”

  Alice glanced around at the fog. “You never mentioned those before, Mr. Watson.”

  “They’re not very common,” he said solemnly. “I’ve never spoken with a man who’s met one, except possibly Korilar just now.”

  She distrusted the twinkle in his eye. “I can guess why not. Have you spoken with people who met one later?” She realized she was inviting him to display his humor. Jumbo had a very good sense of humor and knew it. The fastest way to a man’s heart was always through his vanity, but why was she playing up to him like this? She had caught herself at it several times yesterday.

  “Of course. Seriously, you don’t see jugulars very often—and never for long.”

  “Only when they spring at you?”

  “No, only when they spring at other people!” Jumbo laughed and shouted to the dragons to zomph.

  39

  When Julian Smedley told T’lin Dragontrader that he wanted to go home as fast as possible, the big man took him more literally than he intended. T’lin made a beeline for Olympus with very few stops, and four dragons could transport two riders much faster than four. Julian discovered that he was expected to eat and sleep in the saddle, but pride would not let him countermand his own orders, so he ate and slept in the saddle. The fine weather had broken at last, and the dragons raced joyfully through driving snow, over crag and crevasse. How they managed to stay in contact, Julian had no idea. Most of the time he seemed to journey entirely alone through a blinding white fog, but T’lin and the spare mounts always reappeared eventually.

  He had leisure to brood on Edward Exeter’s megalomania—the disease was obvious enough, the cure was not. You call him crazy because he used to be your friend. You would label anyone else as straight evil and not beat about the bush. Crazy or evil, he was a mass murderer and must be stopped before he did more damage. How, though? With all the mana he had sucked up by martyring his friends, it would take the entire Service to have any hope of overpowering and defanging him, but the Service had already tried and failed. There was no way to tell whether he had recruited Ursula to his team honestly or by using mana on her, and it did not matter. Obviously his Olympian opponents would not have sent her against the Liberator without giving her all the mana they had been able to supply. The Service had shot its bolt. Only Zath could stop the Liberator now.

  Julian had never thought he might find himself cheering for Zath, but if there had to be one supreme homicidal maniac slaughtering innocents all over the Vales, he would rather it not be a former friend of his.

  He also had time to meditate on his own folly. He had behaved like the crassest of boors to Euphemia, walking out on her in her distress, and then he had compounded his sins by bedding Ursula—whom he had never cared fo
r, never lusted after, and now detested. Oh, what a muggins he had been! One little waft of mana and he had run to her side like a lapdog. She had used him all the way to Niolvale. He could not have resisted the mana, but he ought to have guessed what she was doing to him. He would never be able to hold up his head again. Euphemia had warned him, and he had forgotten her warning. He could certainly never look Euphemia in the eye after this.

  It felt like a broken heart, but it was probably only wounded pride.

  Groggy with fatigue, he did not realize that his journey was over until Blizzard, scrambling down a sheer cliff, emerged from the clouds directly above the paddock at Olympus—about a thousand feet above. Julian closed his eyes and kept them shut until he was safely delivered to the grassy valley bottom. Belching triumph, Blizzard raced to the gate, where Mistrunner and Bluegem were already gorging on hay and T’lin was stripping off Starlight’s tack.

  Julian tried to dismount with grace and dignity, but his legs failed him and he sat down abruptly in the mud. Green eyes glinting amusement, T’lin took hold of his arm and heaved him to his feet.

  “Thank you, Seventy-seven,” Julian said staunchly. “You made excellent time. Good show.”

  A broad grin of satisfaction split T’lin’s ginger beard. “The dragons enjoyed it. A record, I believe, Saint Kaptaan.”

  “I really do not doubt that. I’ll have someone collect my kit, if you’ll just leave it here.”

  T’lin promised to have it delivered. Julian thanked him again and trudged off, already sweltering in his furs as the packed snow fell off them in handfuls. One of the joys of Olympus was the mildness of its climate, even in winter. While storms raged on the peaks all around, here only a faint drizzle was falling, but the sky was overcast and darkness not far off.

  He reached his house by blind reckoning and had stumbled up the steps to the veranda before he remembered that Dommi would not be there to care for him. Still, young Pind’l and Ostian ought to be able to manage for a week or two, until Dommi came to his senses and returned. Throwing open the door, Julian bellowed, “Carrot!”

  He marched through to his bedroom, fumbling one-handed with his buttons. Receiving no response, he bellowed again.

  Still nothing.

  That was definitely odd! Where were those two? Then he recalled that there had been no one but T’lin at the paddock, and he had met no one on the road, either, neither Carrot nor Tyika. Up welled sinister memories of his first, disastrous arrival at Olympus, with Exeter. Oh, ridiculous! On that occasion the whole station had been burned to the ground. But still…He went over to the window and peered out. No lights showed in any house he could see. Well, it wasn’t really dark yet. But still…

  Hauling off his coat, he went through to the kitchens. Everything was tidy and spotless as if no one lived here, and the grate was cold. No hot water, not a crust in the larder. Feeling more and more uneasy, he returned to his bedroom and dressed in fresh clothes. Taking an umbrella from the stand by the front door, he tramped out into the dusk.

  He had trudged halfway around the node before he saw any lights in windows, and still he had not met a soul—definitely odd! The first inhabited house was Rawlinson’s, so he went up to the door and rang the bell. He heard it jangle in the distance.

  After a minute or so, he pulled again.

  At last bolts and chain clattered and the door opened. Prof himself peered out, wrapped in a black dressing gown. He held an oil lamp in his hand and had an open book pinned between his ribs and his elbow.

  “God bless my soul! Captain Smedley?”

  “Who else? What the deuce is going on, Prof? Since when have you locked your door? Where is everybody?”

  “Oh, you don’t know, of course, do you?”

  Julian almost exploded. The maniac Seventy-seven had brought him all the way from Niolvale in three days. He was beat and in no mood for any of Prof’s confounded puzzles. But all he said was, “I have news of Exeter and his crazy Liberator crusade.”

  Rawlinson coughed wheezily. “Excuse me. I’ve got the flu, though I think I’m over the worst of it. Wouldn’t you rather try one of the others? The McKays, or—”

  Julian pushed the door. “I must talk with you about Exeter.

  And I need a drink.”

  Prof retreated in disorder. “Well, if you insist…”

  “I do insist,” Julian said.

  Five minutes later, he was stretched out in a leather armchair with a glass of spirits in his hand, staring in stark disbelief at his host. Götterdämmerung?

  Prof’s wife had died in Zath’s assault on the station and he had not remarried. According to the Carrots, he was regularly consoled by the tender embraces of Marian Miller. His living room was a bleak, empty-looking place, because he had rebuilt it with an immortal’s lifetime supply of bookshelves but had not yet had time to acquire books to fill them. His taste in furniture ran to London club style, heavy and dark. The single oil lamp within this barn cast an apologetic glow on a scattering of discarded clothes, books, dirty dishes. The fireplace held only ashes, although the winter air was dank. Prof, in other words, appeared to be just as bereft of domestic servants as Julian.

  More surprising even than that was his fevered look and racking cough. Under his robe showed mauve pajama legs and green bedroom slippers. He had put a bookmark in his book and poured his guest a drink without taking one for himself. Now he was huddled in a corner of the sofa, looking wan and ill in the lurid light. The big house echoed with lonely emptiness.

  “You’re not well!” Julian said.

  Prof scowled at him balefully. “I did mention flu, did I not? Does the simple term ‘flu’ not find suitable referents within your English vocabulary?”

  “Well, then, cure it! Dammit all, man, you’re a stranger. You’re not even supposed to catch head colds.” Julian looked down at his crippled hand. “I thought healing just happened.”

  “Not always.” Prof coughed painfully. “Sometimes it requires conscious application of power. I think your suggestion is an excellent one. I do believe I might have thought of it myself, given sufficient time. The only trouble is that I have no mana at present.”

  “Then ask someone else….” Julian realized that he was being excessively stupid and Prof’s sarcasm was not unwarranted. He took a long draft, feeling the brew burn all the way down inside him. “’Scuse me, I’m all in. What’s going on?”

  “There is something of a mana famine in Olympus just now.”

  “You gave it all to Ursula to use on Exeter, you mean?”

  “Er…That is part of the trouble, yes. But then Zath came to call.”

  “Zath did?”

  Prof greeted his astonishment with a gleam of satisfaction. “Indeed. You have missed eventful times, Captain. Zath transported in by the node one evening and gate-crashed a dinner party at the Chases’. He demanded that the Service restrain the Liberator, otherwise he, Zath, would take it out on our hides. Burn us to the ground. Then he transported out again.” Prof pouted balefully. “I see from your bemused expression that I shall have to be more specific. I personally did not hear the intruder’s words. I confess that when he appeared, what I should like to refer to as a reflex for self-preservation came into play. I hit the ground almost at the dragon paddock. It took me fifteen minutes to walk back. I am not proud of that, but I was certainly not alone in using the trapdoor. About half of those present did the same. The rest reacted by trying to subdue what they assumed was only a reaper—vainly, of course, because he wasn’t. The long and short of it was that everyone who was present at that dinner party was totally stripped of mana.”

  Julian stared at his host. He certainly did look ill, but could he be delirious? Was any of this nonsense true? “But—but that can’t have been everyone!” The Chases’ dining room was not big enough to have held the whole of the Service.

  “No. But we are extremely short-staffed now. That is another development you missed. A great many people were suddenly overcome by a
fervent calling to minister to the benighted heathen. They did a bunk—vamoosed, scarpered.”

  “You mean they let Zath scare them away?”

  Prof scowled. “No. They let the flu scare them away. This is no ordinary flu. Back Home they call it the Spanish flu. It’s killed more millions than the war, and it especially strikes down young adults. It’s incredibly infectious—it circled the Earth in five months, Betsy says.”

  “I thought only people could cross over! You’re saying that germs can?”

  “If by germs you mean bacteria, then influenza is not caused by a bacterium.”

  “What is it caused by?”

  “A filterable virus,” Prof said smugly.

  “What’s that?”

  “No one knows. It can’t be seen in a microscope but is infectious. And obviously it can cross over between worlds. The Peppers caught it, but they had recovered before they came back.” His voice was becoming hoarser and weaker. “That’s why they were late. It must have been Euphemia. She went Home for just a few hours, to fetch Exeter’s cousin. She noticed nothing herself, but her Carrots all came down with it, and it spread through the valley like a flash of lightning. Those who still had mana tried healing. They could not keep up with it.” He coughed several times painfully. “I don’t know how many Carrots have died, but a lot, certainly. And some of us, too: Foghorn, Olga, Vera, Garcia. Very suddenly, all of them.”

  “Good God!” Julian took a long drink. Strangers dying? Of flu?