Future Indefinite

by Dave Duncan

  Prof seemed to find his astonishment amusing, for he bared his teeth in an ironic smile. “Götterdämmerung, Captain? The Carrots are naturally somewhat disillusioned. Their idols have feet of clay. The immortals are mortal after all. They have withdrawn their services. Personally, I am surprised that they have not driven us out of the valley, lock, stock, and barrel. They may do so yet.”

  Julian drained his glass to help him digest this incredible news. Prof blinked Wearily at his guest. Then he hauled himself off the sofa and shuffled over to the sideboard. He poured himself a drink and brought back the decanter, depositing it alongside Julian. He returned to his seat and was convulsed by a severe spasm of coughing.

  “Alice is here?” Julian asked.

  “She is on Nextdoor, yes. She’s gone off to see Exeter. What news of the Liberator, then?”

  “His belfry is jam-packed full of bats. It’s every bit as bad as Jumbo and the others predicted. He thinks he’s the messiah. He’s marching on Tharg, dragging a ragtag rabble of peasants behind him. I was hoping…” But any lingering hopes of the Service being able to stop Exeter were now dead. “He’s ripping up all your work on the True Gospel. He calls the Pentatheon and the others enchanters, instead of demons, and you know where that leads. He’s in cahoots with some of them, so God knows what sort of bargains he’s been making. He’s invented some kind of reincarnation claptrap to replace the afterlife among the stars. He’s issuing divine doctrine on his own authority. He’s mad as a whirling dervish.” Julian refilled his glass.

  Prof rubbed his chest as if it hurt. “I shouldn’t worry about him too much. I think Zath has his number.” He smirked, which meant he thought he was being especially perceptive.

  Fatigue and liquor were making Julian’s head spin. “Let me get this straight. First of all, what the hell was Zath up to, coming here? That kind of threat is just the thing to get all our backs up and turn us into Exeter supporters!”

  “Well, of course. You’re quite right there. Bluster will work on natives, but Zath can’t know much about the English. Even Pinky was sounding pro-Liberator next day.”

  “And second…why would he? Why try to stop the Liberator by threatening us? That’s even rummer! It almost sounds as if Zath has the wind up!”

  Prof nodded and leaned back, closing his eyes. “Of course. That’s what we all thought. I’m afraid it was what we were supposed to think.” Ill as he was, he was not beyond playing stupid games.

  “What’s missing?” Julian barked. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “Jumbo. Jumbo and Alice Pearson—Exeter’s cousin—that’s her name now, Pearson. She’s a widow. They were present, of course. Later that night the two of them swiped a couple of dragons and took off.”

  The implications took a moment to register. Then Julian said, “Oh my God!” and drained his glass. Alice, what have we done to you? “This was not planned?”

  “Not at all. Zath asked who was in charge and spoke only to him. He wasn’t in the room more than a minute or two, I’m told. But Jumbo was there, and Mrs. Pearson was there.”

  “You think Jumbo’s…” How could a man put it into words? “You think he’s a traitor? You think Exeter was right all along?”

  Prof rubbed his eyes without opening them. “I know he was. The Jean St. John story was a blind. It was Jumbo who tried to queer Exeter by dropping him in Belgium—he admits it. The point is that Jumbo couldn’t help himself. He’s been around a long time, so he’s well known to the opposition. Zath trapped him, installed a compulsion, and sent him off to be Judas.”

  Julian shuddered. Much as Exeter ought to be stopped, there was something peculiarly repellent about a trusted friend turning Brutus, even if that friend was not responsible for his own intentions. Mana had not seemed like an utter evil when he had used it to convert the troopers at Seven Stones, but Ursula had turned him into a gigolo with it, Exeter had slaughtered his friends to obtain it, then used it to unman the Niolian cavalry—and now this tale of Jumbo being bent, at least once and probably twice. No one was safe when there was mana around.

  “You think Zath chose Jumbo again? Seems odd. Exeter will be suspicious this time, won’t he?” Then he shuddered a second time, feeling his skin crawl as if he had just fallen into an especially foul pit. “You don’t mean Alice?”

  “I don’t know.” Prof peered Wearily at him. “Jumbo’s more likely, because Zath would know he was a senior member of the Service. He shouldn’t have known who Mrs. Pearson was—but I fear it is a great mistake to underestimate him. Hell, Captain, maybe he did come just to make threats.”

  “But you don’t think so. You think he came to hex Jumbo again.”

  Rawlinson struggled with a cough and took a drink. “I think one of them’s a poisoned pawn, probably Jumbo. He may not even know it himself, but I think he’s a loaded gun, and when he meets the Liberator, he’ll fire.”

  “And he took Alice along to allay suspicion? As a decoy?” Just as Ursula had taken Julian himself. “Exeter’ll be so surprised to see her that he won’t pay much attention to Jumbo.”

  “That would be Jumbo’s thinking,” Prof agreed in a whisper, “although not willing thinking, if you follow me. But it could have been Alice who talked Jumbo into taking her.”

  Julian cringed. “Exeter has buckets of mana of his own. Whichever one of them is the hemlock, he’ll detect the hex…won’t he?”

  Prof heaved himself upright with a groan. “If you’ll excuse me, old man, I’m going back to bed.” He was swaying on his feet. “Stay and finish the bottle if you want. There’s more in that cupboard. No, I don’t think Exeter will detect the trap. With the kind of power Zath has at his disposal, he won’t have left any fingerprints.”

  40

  Julian spent the night on Prof Rawlinson’s sofa and went home through a drizzly dawn to clean up as best he could. Even the water supply had failed, though. Exploring his own house in a way he never had before, he discovered that the taps were supplied from a tank in the attic, which was charged by hand-pumping from an underground cistern—how it arrived there was not clear, but he managed to fill a bucket from it without falling in. There was no firewood cut, and he could not handle an ax.

  Clean but shivering, he had just conquered the last shirt button when he heard the doorbell jangle. On the veranda stood William McKay, unshaven and rumpled as a wet cat, beaming in his usual witless fashion and holding out a covered basket.

  “Heard you were home, old man. Brought you some brekker.”

  Julian was nonplussed. “That’s extremely kind of you.”

  “Oh, don’t thank me, old son. Thank the Reformed Methodist Ladies’ Good Deed and Morris Dancing Society, Olympus Branch. They distribute gin to the needy. I’m just the messenger boy. You can tip me a tanner if you’re feeling generous. Need the basket back.”

  “Come in a moment.”

  McKay stepped over the threshhold and stopped. He was a tall, vapid man and the best linguist in the station, able to speak at least twelve of the Valian dialects without saying anything of substance in any of them. His only interest was fishing and he was of interest to Julian only because he was Euphemia’s husband. She swore they had not shared a bed in years, but how did one cross-examine a man about his own wife?

  Lifting a corner of the cover, Julian found fruit, bread that smelled newly baked, and a stoppered bottle hot enough to contain tea. His mouth began watering enthusiastically. He thought of Prof. “You do this gin-distributing to all us worthy poor?”

  “Well, it makes sense to have a central mess. Got to ration the supplies, what? All hang together. Polly organized it.” McKay’s gaze wandered past Julian and back again. “You—you’re alone?”

  “Yes. Come and sit a moment. I need to talk to you.”

  “Oh. Should be getting back. Just wondered if you had news of Euphemia. We’re a bit concerned, you know.”

  “What? Why? Come in here,” Julian said firmly. Taking the basket, he led the way into hi
s drawing room. It was small and rather sparse, for he had no skill at homemaking and rarely entertained, but he noted that it was at least tidy. He waved his guest to a chair and took one himself. He began emptying the basket. “Tell me.”

  McKay folded himself down into the chair and stared at the floor uncomfortably. “Well, she went back Home briefly to fetch Exeter’s cousin….”

  “And brought the Spanish flu back. Yes, I heard. Where is she now?”

  “Don’t know. Just got back from Thovale myself yesterday. Haven’t caught it yet, but I expect I will. She’d gone already. Thought you…Well, you know. Thought you might know.”

  Julian gripped the bottle between his knees and pulled out the stopper. An intriguing wisp of steam emerged. “No.” He took a swig of tea and burned his throat satisfactorily.

  “Ah. Seems she managed to sweet-talk the Carrots into supplying us with some grub a couple of days ago, when we ran out. Then she did a bunk. Didn’t tell anyone where she was going. Left no note.” McKay was looking everywhere except at Julian. “Unless you…?”

  “None here, I’m afraid. Look, McKay…. You know we’re lovers.”

  The tall man shrugged at the fireplace. “No moss. We’ve gone our own ways a long time. You made her very happy, old man. More than—er, well, you know.”

  More than half the other men in the station in their respective times? How old was she? Pride would never let him ask.

  “We had words. I’m deucedly sorry and I want to make up. You have no idea where she’s gone?”

  “Not a bally notion. She works Lemodvale, you know. She’ll have contacts there. Or—” He bit his lip. “The Carrots may know, I suppose. She gets on better with them than most of us do.”

  “She told me about Timothy.”

  Suddenly it was eye-contact time, man to man stuff, stiff upper lips. McKay colored, then clasped his hands together so tightly that the knuckles showed white. “Long time ago. Look, I should be getting back….”

  “It makes no difference to me, what she did. Like to hear your side of it, though.”

  “Dang it all, old man…!”

  “Please?” Julian said, feeling his own face burning but utterly determined to see this through. “For her sake? I love her, but I hurt her feelings without meaning to. Want to make up. I want to understand her.”

  “Don’t we all! Men can’t understand women, laddie. Women are a mystery in all worlds. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.” McKay stared at the empty fireplace, chewing his lip. “It may not have been entirely all her fault, actually. I suppose. One of those things…She didn’t fit in, really. The women were pretty bad to her.”

  Idiot! What had he expected? How long ago? Twenty years? Fifty? Even now it was easy to imagine the ladies of Olympus snubbing the fishmonger’s daughter from rural Ireland, a pride of cats sharing a mouse. It was also easy to see that such stupid class prejudice should mean a lot less to Julian Smedley, who had been through the Great War, than it did to all those Victorian fossils. If the war had decided anything, it had brought England together. Things would be different from now on. But even if Euphemia might still be a misfit back in Cheltenham, here on Nextdoor she was his woman and that was all that mattered.

  “I may not have been as much help as I should have been,” McKay said gruffly. “She went native. Moved in with a Carrot woodcutter.”

  Where else could she have gone? “She—they—they had just the one child?”

  “Well, yes. Then her big buck Carrot got eaten by a jugular. A year or two later she came back to me, brat and all.” He shrugged. “Took her in. Separate rooms, you know? We got along better like that. And Tim. Jolly good kid, actually. Brought him up as a gentleman. Taught him fishing. He went off Home a few years ago. Last we heard he was with Head Office. He’s a stranger over there, of course. Well, mustn’t point fingers, old man! I’m pretty sure I’ve fathered a few by-blows around the Station myself.” McKay lumbered to his feet.

  Obviously it still rankled that his wife had gone native, left him for a Carrot. He probably didn’t even appreciate the courage it must have taken for her to come back to him and his precious friends. Well, what she had done or not done did not matter now to Julian. He’d rather think of the young Euphemia having a love affair with a young Carrot than of her being blackmailed into bed by slimy Pinky Pinkney. Nothing wrong with Carrots except that they were mortal. Domini, for one, was a hell of a lot better man than Pinkney or even this bat-brained William McKay.

  “What news of Exeter?” McKay asked, shambling toward the door.

  “All bad.” Julian told him the tale. “It’s Alice Prescott I’m worried about. Pearson, I mean.”

  McKay nodded vaguely. “What are you going to do?”

  Julian took a moment to digest what he had learned. If Euphemia was not in Olympus, then there was no reason for him to stay. With only one hand, he was limited even in the help he could give to the sick. “I think I’m going to head back to Exeter’s crusade again. Alice is an old friend, and Exeter may be dead. I sort of feel responsible for her. If Zath bewitched her, then she may be dead, too, or crazy by now. Or Jumbo is, if he was the poisoned pill. The flu must be all over the Vales already. She doesn’t know the language, she has no money.” That bitch Ursula might not help her.

  “Better you than me, old man. I must get back to Kingdom Hall. Good luck.” McKay held out a limp hand. “Don’t count on finding much here when you come back, what?”

  “No. I won’t.”

  Götterdämmerung!

  41

  A quick reconnaissance of the Station confirmed McKay’s report. Polly Murgatroyd had organized meals and care for the sick, but the Carrots controlled the food supply and might cut it off at any time. There was nothing Julian could do to make things any better. He discovered that three quarters of the strangers had fled and not one of the remainder was able or willing to accompany Captain Smedley on a hundred-mile walk. All the rabbits had gone from the paddocks and when he continued on up the valley to the dragon compound, he found that deserted also. Seventy-seven must have discovered the situation and chosen the logical course of action.

  He gathered a blanket, spare clothes, and some money, and walked out his front door with a pack on his back and an umbrella in his good hand. He could reach Randorvale before dark. He might be carrying the infection with him, but so many of the Service had preceded him that he was not going to make matters any worse. From Randorvale he would go by Lappinvale, Mapvale, and Jurgvale—none of those passes was beyond a man on foot. If necessary, he could carry on to Niolvale, but before then he ought to have news of the Liberator. He should also have learned just how badly the Spanish flu had struck Nextdoor. An epidemic that could circle the Earth in five months would have spread across the Vales in days.

  Fifteen minutes brought him to the Carrots’ village. His approach was noticed, and a delegation of three elderly men came out to meet him on the road. Two he could not recall ever seeing before, but the third had been the Pinkneys’ butler, although Julian could not recall the man’s name. When he was still about twenty or thirty feet away, that one shouted, “Stop!”

  Julian stopped and stood there in the mud, facing rebellion while rain pattered on his umbrella. “How many of you have been stricken? How many have died?”

  “Too many! Let the tyikank attend to their own sick and leave the Carrots alone. You are not welcome.” Their green eyes were uniformly hostile.

  “I do not understand. We have brought much prosperity to this valley, and done much good for your people. Just because a sickness comes, you suddenly turn on—”

  “Go away, Kaptaan!” said another. “You have brought the wrath of the gods upon us. Many of us think we should burn your big houses and drive you out. Do not tempt our young men to rashness. Go!”

  “I am trying to.”

  “Go by the river trail, then,” said the former butler.

  That was a sizable detour, but evidently charisma
was not going to work.

  “Is Entyika McKay with you?”

  “No.”

  “I have two letters here—one for her, if she comes back, and one from Dommi for Ayetha.”

  “Leave them on that stump and begone.”

  Julian did so and trudged back to the turnoff. The Carrots’ attitude was infuriating but understandable. It was only natural for them to attribute the pestilence to Zath and the anger of the Pentatheon. Perhaps the storm could have been weathered if the tyikank had stood their ground and not been so craven. As it was, the Service was wounded mortally. It could not blame Exeter or the Pentatheon, for it had brought Götterdämmerung upon itself.

  42

  No one knew how Roaring Cave had earned so inappropriate a name, for nowhere contained more silence. It was a huge cavern in a hillside overlooking Lospass, much used by travelers. Eleal had overnighted in it and explored it a few days ago on her way to Niolvale. She was greatly relieved to see it again, for her muscles were not accustomed to her new leg; they throbbed as if tortured with red-hot pincers. Old Piol seemed to be in no worse shape than she was, but they were both chilled to icicles by the rain. They scrambled up the slope to the cave mouth in the company of a dozen or so other pilgrims, being met there by one of the Liberator’s shield-bearing deputies. He wore a shabby, incongruous military tunic.

  “We have just lit a new fire,” he announced pompously. “Follow me and I will lead you to it. Try not to make unnecessary noise.”

  The floor was generally level, but littered with boulders of all sizes, which must have fallen in past ages from the soaring roof. The uneven path was tricky going in the gloom. At first Eleal could see nothing except Piol’s back directly ahead of her, but gradually her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light of many fires, each one surrounded by several dozen people. The warning against noise had been given because everyone was trying to listen to D’ward himself. He was sitting with one group but speaking loudly, apparently not preaching as much as answering questions.