by Colin Kapp
“Why does he flicker like that?”
“Because he travels in several dimensions, of which this is only one. He visits the others constantly, thus at no time is he fully here.”
“Why does he sit on your shoulder?”
“We’re attached until death—my death. Coul is immortal.”
“Can’t you take him off—ever?”
“There’s no way. He lives right into me.”
“Like a parasite?” The prospect clearly worried her.
“No, not like a parasite. This is symbiosis. We each contribute something to the other. A sort of partnership, you understand.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I support Coul with the life forces he needs to maintain a partial reality in this dimension. Because I’m a good host he looks after my welfare when my needs become extreme.”
Roamer had lost some of her fears now, and her repugnance was turning to fascination.
“I think he’s very, very ugly.”
“Touch him.”
“Should I?”
“He’d like it fine—if you believe in him. Do you believe he exists?”
“I can see him. Why therefore should I doubt?”
“Do you believe he’s a god?”
She hesitated for a moment, anxiously reading Wildheit’s eyes, wondering if, against all the odds, this could be some sort of joke. She found no mockery in his face, only a profound sympathy.
“I believe he is a god,” she said.
With infinite caution she extended her arm and let her fingers come delicately in contact with the leathery brown deity. As she touched it, she closed her eyes involuntarily, then opened them, in a kind of ecstasy. She remained thus for a couple of minutes, then took her hand away.
“What did you feel?” asked Wildheit.
“I felt … music.” Her voice was strangely distant.
“That’s good! He accepts you.”
“Why should he accept me?”
“Because he lives in a multitude of dimensions—all gods have problems of identity. You’ve demonstrated a belief in his existence here and now. That gives him a point of empathy he can use to strengthen his frame of reference.”
“You’re being very technical.”
“I’m being practical. Coul needs belief the way you need food. And he’s appreciative when he gets it. When you’re in extreme need, call out to him. If you believe in him enough, could be he’ll find a way to help. Now, what time does the late watch begin?”
“Soon now. Why?”
“Dabria has arranged a subterfuge. He dare not appear to approve of your leaving, so he’s arranged to allow us to escape. When the watch changes, I’ll have my weapons back and then we can go. Can you lead me through the city to the bridge over the river?”
“I think so.”
“Good! Out in the desert I have a spaceship. If we can reach that we’ll be safe. But we may have to fight to get there. Stay close to me, and do exactly as I say.”
As he was speaking he heard a slight noise from the far end of the cellar. Moving to investigate, he found one of the doors ajar, and in a small room beyond this his uniform and equipment had been laid on a table. Dressing as swiftly as he was able, he returned to Roamer.
“If you’re ready, partner, we’ll go see what Chaos has in store for us.”
Signaling for her to stand well back, he shattered the heavy door with a single explosive capsule, then fired a shock pellet down the corridor he found beyond. He ducked his head out of the way of the picopulse shock, then signaled for Roamer to follow fast. At the end of the corridor they found two stunned watchmen slumped over a table. Past them was another door and a flight of stairs leading upward which brought them out on the top of a guard wall on the fringes of the city itself.
“Now which way?”
“To the left. That way we can avoid the watch-school.”
The day was closing to a golden dusk, and the streets beneath the wall were largely deserted. A tower in the wall suggested a means of descent and also the presence of more watchmen. Wildheit cleared the entrance with a shock pellet and followed straight through down the spiral stone stairs. At the bottom he surprised two watchmen who were coming to investigate the noise. He dropped one with a hand-blow, and the second fled into another part of the tower presumably to fetch assistance.
The marshal did not follow him. They now had a clear route into the sandy streets and an urgent need to reach the bridge before too many watchmen could be mustered. The few people they passed among the random houses appeared surprised to see the pair run run by, but made no attempt to interfere. Soon they found themselves on the edge of the river and in sight of the bridge. Unexpectedly the bell in the gatehouse began to sound a soulful alarm. Other bells set further in the city took up the message and relayed it until the whole evening sky seemed alive with clamorous sounds.
SIX
WILDHEIT swore, then drew the breathless girl into a recess between two buildings.
“Is there another bridge, Roamer?”
“Many kilometers away.”
“Then I’m going to have to take this one the hard way. If we get cross, how will they follow us? On foot?”
“On animals, I think.”
“When we start for the bridge, keep running. Don’t stop for anything until we reach the other side.”
Wildheit began to load the projectors carried in his belt as they ran. As soon as the head of the bridge was within his range he began to open fire. The first projectiles hit their targets and lay silently for a few seconds then each started to emit a piercing scream which jarred, throbbed and interacted with the others to produce a painful cacophony of sound that easily drowned the loudest bells and drove the watchmen from the gatehouses in panic and alarm. As they congregated in the approach road, Wildheit laid a pattern of gas pellets among them, and they sagged slowly to their knees and pitched forward in ludicrous postures of sleep.
With a pellet of high explosive, Wildheit shattered the iron gate across the path well before they reached it. Soon they were on the bridge itself. However, many watchmen were closing into the area behind them and operating some form of projected beam that disturbed the light-path in the air as it probed disturbingly close. Continuing to run, the marshal began to distribute small canisters behind him. Some of these produced eye-baffling flares and other, great clouds of smoke which the flares made luminous and thus impenetrable to the eye. Then as they reached the farther bank of the river, a great series of explosions ripped the bridge apart.
Panting painfully for breath, they stopped for a moment to look back at the damage. When the smoke had cleared there was nothing left of the bridge but a few broken piers protruding above the surface of the dark and muddied waters.
“That should hold them for a bit,” said Wildheit as he lent the panting girl his arm to lean on. From a pocket he produced a small box and began to manipulate the studs inset on its front.
“What—what are you doing?” Roamer was still fighting to regain her breath.
“If they have fast animals I doubt if we’ve time to reach the ship on foot. But I have a vehicle near my spacecraft, and I’m calling it by radio. There now, it’s coming toward us. We’ll walk on ahead until we meet it.”
Shortly the engines of the crawler sounded over the desert sands and when the vehicle appeared, Wildheit expertly halted it close by and they climbed into the cabin. The experience of riding in a mechanical vehicle was new to Roamer. She closed her eyes and clung on tightly as they moved rapidly out to where the Gegenschein waited. As they neared the patrol-ship, however, she opened her eyes and cried out in sudden alarm.
“Please stop! We can’t go on. Something’s terribly wrong.”
“In what way?”
“I see a great and sudden leap in entropy. An explosion …”
Wildheit slowed the crawler to a halt, prepared to argue that what she was reading was probably the imminent future firing of the take-off
engines. To allay her fears he patiently began explaining this theory when the Gegenschein abruptly burst into a flaming incandescence which lit the desert as bright as day and threw out such heat that the crawler’s occupants would have been burned alive had the vehicle not been built for radiation safety. Though the conflagration died as suddenly as it had blossomed, Wildheit knew he no longer had a ship. Another realization came also. From far out in the surrounding darkness came the sound of sticks on sticks …
Clickety … Clickety …
… overlaying the subnotes of a deep and reverberant horn …
… Clickety …
Great gouts of violet-scented perfume washed around them, and Wildheit found his senses start to swim. His immediate reaction was to cut off the external ventilation fans and switch the crawler over to its own internal atmosphere. The idea worked, and the suffocating scent of violets was swiftly removed by the activated-carbon filters. Then he brought the motors up to a thunderous scream and engaged the torque converter. The vehicle leaped forward like a startled animal and roared away across the desert past the molten remains of what had recently been the patrol-ship.
Curiously, even the great engine noise inside the cabin failed to prevent their perception of the clicking sticks; and behind and beyond the engine’s roar, the baying of the great horn slipped inexorably down below the lowest registers of the human auditory threshold. The slow throb of its pulse seemed alternately to attract and repel them, so that they began to sway like grasses in a wind.
With a strong oath, Wildheit switched on the crawler’s powerful searchlights and swept them over the desert scene. The scanning beam revealed nothing of note, so he armed the automatic cannon and put a complete circle of close-spaced super-high explosive charges round them at minimum range. The clicking sticks became silent, and the vast horn choked in mid-utterance and was dead. To complete the certainty of their deliverance, the marshal then put out a second circle of explosive death pitched at a slightly greater range. When he was certain that nothing within the span of his fire could be alive, he slowed the crawler back to cruising speed.
“That’s for Dabria,” he said disgustedly. “I should have guessed he’d lay ambush. Letting us escape wasn’t the only way he could keep control. Killing us would have been more effective. Nor would the Federation have bothered to send another marshal once the Chaos Seer was dead. What I don’t figure is how they had access to a device that could destroy a parked patrol-ship.”
“They wouldn’t need a device,” said Roamer. “Nor need it have been Dabria’s work. There are seers who can mentally trigger any source of potential energy.”
Now the beam of the searchlight began to pick up the blast craters, and near them he could see occasional bodies clad in the black tunic-dress of the Guardians. Several white sticks lay in the path, and farther out a buckled device of hoops and canvas was all that was left of the great subsonic horn.
“It’s a pity they had to learn the hard way,” said Wildheit seriously.
“What do we do now?” asked Roamer. Her relief at their escape from the ambush was evident, but a lingering fear still haunted her.
“We have to find another route off-world—and quickly. How far is the nearest spaceport?”
“There isn’t one. When Mayo was declared off-limits, all the spaceports were dismantled and all the ships destroyed. That’s how they made the prohibition absolute.”
Wildheit brought the crawler to a halt, then let the engines die.
“Coul, I wish to speak with Marshal Hover. Can you enter communion with Talloth?”
“I see no great evidence of need,” Coul said archly. “Have I not told you the purpose of communion is other than to circumvent your pedestrian communications system. Why not use your FTL transmitter?”
“Because the crawler’s FTL set isn’t powerful enough to reach Terra direct, and it could take days to attract the attention of a relay station. Anyway, the local sun broadcasts so much sub-etheric noise we’d never get any intelligence through the channel.”
“Then, because you love me, I’ll communicate with Talloth. If he’s of like mind, we may grant your wish.”
Wildheit relaxed and tried to be patient, knowing there was no way he could force the issue. Despite their careful mimicry of human conversation, the gods spoke to each other by unknown means across a whole spectrum of dimensions and with a complexity of thought a human mind was never likely to comprehend. At some instant of quantized time and in some alter-universe the two gods neared each other—perhaps shared a finite fraction of a second of composite identity. They were reluctant to use their powers of communion for the purpose of human communication, but the rare occasions when the request was granted frequently justified the presence of the gods on the marshals’ shoulders.
“Breathe,” said Coul finally.
“Hullo, Jym! This is Hover. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m still on Mayo, Cass. I’ve got the Chaos Seer, but lost the patrol-ship. At the moment we’re sitting it out in the crawler, but the local constabulary has elevated unfriendliness to the status of a fine art. What can you do about getting us off?”
“Hold a second while I check the shipping updates. Mmm! Not good. Space Force detected a mass alien breakthrough and put every ship they had about twenty kilo-parsecs out in the galactic drift. Even if they could spare a cruiser, it couldn’t get to you inside of six days. There’s nothing commercial anywhere near your edge of the Rim. Our best bet is a patrol-craft out from Terra, but that could take ten days. Can you hold out that long?
“No chance! Without the patrol-ship I can’t even refuel the crawler—leaving aside the niceties of food and rest.”
“Leave it to me, Jym. I’ll put out an all-service priority call. There’s bound to be some experimental craft around, or a random patrol-scout which isn’t on the updates. Whatever you do, reserve enough power for the radio-beacon, so you can be located from space. How’s he taking all this—the seer?”
“He’s not a he, he’s a she. Name of Roamer.”
“Aren’t you overdoing this running-low-on-fuel bit?”
“Knock it off, Cass. She’s about sixteen.”
“But she is a Chaos reader?”
“Pure and natural. I’d have been fried goose if she hadn’t predicted that the patrol-ship was going to blow.”
“Then clear all lines,” said Hover. “We need that talent fast. The Chaos Weapon just struck at Gannen, and we lost the relativity research ship and some of the best scientific brains in the galaxy.”
Wildheit added another fifty kilometers to their distance from the city before he decided to stop for the night. In the desert sand, the crawler left broad and easily followed tracks, so he reasoned that only distance could give them relative security from surprise attack. He then closed down all non-essential systems to conserve their dwindling fuel and activated the radio beacon in case Hover’s estimate had been unduly pessimistic.
Just before dawn, the soft bleep of the beacon’s return signal threw him sharply awake.
“What’s the matter?” Roamer asked.
“Spacecraft in the stratosphere. Very likely trying for a landing. I think we’re about to get lucky.”
He switched on the detectors and watched a spot of light falling across the screen, while the figures on the digital readout chased each other back and forth like agitated snakes.
“Landing for sure, but that’s no Service craft. I’ve seldom seen such a haphazard approach mode. At a guess he’s without instruments, blind drunk, and operating the controls with his feet.”
“Is that bad?” Roamer asked gravely.
“Well, there’s only one group in space who can be that bad and still survive—and that’s the Rhaqui.”
“The Rhaqui?”
“Space gypsies. There’s three or four tribes of them. They wander around in several old spacecraft salvaged from breaking yards. A finer gang of outright villains you’ll never meet. Nobody will give them
planet-space, and they’re too lazy to develop a world of their own.”
From the path of its final trajectory they could tell that the descending spacecraft was nominally homing on their radio beacon. So crazy was the approach mode that Wildheit cancelled the beacon and drove a kilometer or so out of position lest the craft descend on top of them. Finally the huge hulk loomed down out of the sky and made an incredibly prolonged and untidy touchdown on the desert sands.
“That’s the Rhaqui for sure,” said Wildheit. “We’ll give them till sun-up then go over. It’ll take that long for the ground to cool.”
At the sight of the first edge of the sun, Wildheit maneuvered the crawler back into the vicinity of the antiquated and space-stained hull. Almost immediately a hatch opened and an outlandishly garbed and grinning figure wearing a huge tricorne hat climbed out and came swaggering across the sand to meet them.
“Kes-kes Saltzeim,” Wildheit said to Roamer. “The biggest rogue of them all.”
“Hola, Marshal Jym! What coincidence to meet you here!”
“It would have been coincidence, if you hadn’t been illegally monitoring the Service FTL transmissions and picked up an all-service priority call.”
Saltzeim grinned broadly. “Marshal, to you everything’s illegal. Smuggling, breaking quarantine, piracy, theft, rape—everything that gives life some spice. Not, of course, that I indulge in such things. But I can read, you understand?”
“I understand well enough,” said Wildheit.
“Like the story I was reading telling of a space-marshal engaged in a kidnap that went wrong. I think to myself I have ship and he doesn’t and if this was true and not story I could perhaps arrange trade.”
“You thought wrong, Kes-kes. I’m requisitioning your ship. Galactic Override Authority.”
“I see your lips move, but I hear no sense. Then I suppose to myself what the marshal’s enemies would pay me to leave him here. Pure supposition, you understand?”
“I understand. What’s your price, Kes-kes?”
During the conversation about twenty more gypsies, an assortment of male and female, old and young, had descended from the spacecraft and were forming an interested circle around the negotiators. Saltzeim made a mock attempt to scan the skies.
