by Robert Adams
“Now how in the hell did that deer get up there, I wonder?” remarked little Djahn Staiklee.
Recalling Africa, Milo said, “She was put up there to keep her out of reach of other meat-eaters until the killer comes back to feed again on her. That little trick answers the question of just what kind of large cat it was that the prairiecats smelled out in these ruins. The only cat of any size that does that is the leopard.”
“Leopard, Uncle Milo?” asked Gy Linsee. “What kind of cat is it?”
“Very similar to Spotted One, Gy,” he replied. “Spotted, like she is, very strong and agile, very territorial, and unpredictable of temperament, too. They will hunt and kill and eat anything they can catch and pull down … including humans, though they seem to prefer prey the size of that doe up there. Well be wise to avoid her, if possible, especially since she’ll soon have cubs to protect and to feed. That she’s placed her larder in that particular tree may mean that she’s denning close to it, so we’ll take another route out of the city and let her be.”
After about a quarter mile more of riding, the street debouched into another, much wider one, stretching nearly a hundred feet from one side to the other and lined with wrecked towers of rust and pitted masonry, some featureless fronts, others pierced with regular openings that once had been windows but that now gaped blackly like the eyeholes of bare, picked skulls.
At a distance of ten or twelve feet from the fronts of these ruins lay small, roughly rectangular mounds that Milo could still identify as the rust-eaten hulks of trucks and automobiles. The mere presence of such here meant that this city had never before been visited by the metal-hunters, else they would no longer be standing in one piece.
To young Staiklee, he said, “Here’s the answer to your father’s problems, Djahn. When we get back to camp, either you or your brother must ride back westward, find your clan and tell your father to bring them east, to this place, if he wants metals. This city looks to have been unvisited by man for a century or more, at least. Clans Staiklee and Gahdfree could mine it, off and on, for years to come, bartering everything they can’t themselves use to the traders.
“These hulks alone”—he waved at the remnants of vehicles—“will contain more than enough still-usable steel to outfit every warrior in the two clans with armor and weapons, shoe every last horse and mule and draft ox and still give enough left over to trade off.
“Now, let’s dismount and look more closely at some of those ruins. But, Gy, Djahn, stay with me at all times and be very, very cautious—we don’t want part of a building to collapse on us this morning.”
But most of the easily accessible metal on the building fronts proved to be aluminum extrusion and so badly oxidized as to be very brittle and utterly useless. The first lucky find was in a booth inside the ground-floor lobby of a large building; here they were able to collect and bag several hundred brass key blanks, which, properly ground down and shaped and sharpened, would become as many fine brass arrowheads.
A similar booth in the same building lobby was also a treasure trove of sorts. Once Milo had broken off the rusty lock of the counter cabinet—all of thick, heavy-duty acrylic plastic, now dim, dirty, discolored and slightly warped but still sound—the two younger men wondered and exclaimed at the dozens of knives and daggers of fine steel, along with stones and steels for sharpening.
The next booth yielded a quantity of cups, mugs, bowls and goblets of pewter, silver plate, gold plate and anodized aluminum, keychains and currency clips in assorted metals, a double handful of small charm pendants in sterling silver and an equal or larger number of finger rings of turquoise and German silver as well as several massive silver rings in the forms of skulls, wolf heads, cat heads, goat heads, ram heads, bull heads, Satan heads, and eagle heads.
Within the space of a bare hour, the three men had filled to overflowing the sacks they had brought along on this reconnaissance with artifacts of the civilization that had preceded their own, and Milo suggested that they ride back to camp.
“Nothing we leave is going anywhere in our absence,” he remarked jocularly.
On the ride back out of the ruined city, Gy Linsee’s flawless archery skills brought down no less than four tiny antelope—each of the creatures not much larger than a big rabbit, and two of them equipped with miniature, but sharp, horns as evidence of their true maturity, despite their size.
“Did you ever before see such little antelopes, Uncle Milo?” asked Gy.
Milo nodded. “Yes, and they were this kind, I think, too, but that was very long ago and very, very far away from here. I believe these were called dikdiks or something similar; like that leopard, they were not originally native to this continent, so there must have been a zoo or preserve or, more likely, a park where animals from other parts of the world were allowed to run loose somewhere around here. That’s where the plains lions came from, you know, and all of the antelope with unbranched horns, too.”
Once out onto the open prairie, Gy and Djahn Staiklee vied with each other in flushing out and arrowing rabbits, so that they all arrived at the new campsite with the four minuscule antelope, no less than seven plump rabbits and the heavy bags of nonedible booty.
There was already much food in the camp. Bard Herbuht’s hunt had chanced across and brought down a good-sized feral heifer only an hour or so out and, on their way back, had found a salt spring whereat they had been able to kill a ringhorn buck.
Moreover, while clearing the new campsite, some clutches of bird eggs had been discovered, and the bard’s children had brought in two armadillos. Karee Linsee had found an extensive stand of sunflowers and had dug up nearly a bushel of the thick, tasty roots. Not to be outdone by Gy’s other wife, Myrah Linsee had strung her fine bow, taken a fishing arrow or two, a spool of line and a few crickets, and repaired to the lakeshore, returning with three good-sized bass and a catfish.
There seemed to be a plenitude of firewood, for a change. Nearby was an entire stand of trees that apparently had been drowned in some unusual rise of the lake’s water level, years agone. Dried by years of the constant prairie winds, the numbers still standing were become excellent fuel, and given the frugal ways of Horseelansfolk, there was enough wood to last the small encampment’s needs for months.
Milo was inordinately pleased. With so much food on hand, there would be no need to mount any hunt on the morrow, so he could take a couple of carts, the experienced Djoolya and all but a couple of the young warriors back with him and Gy to the ruined city center with all the tools they would need to delve more deeply and thoroughly. Bard Herbuht could and willingly would remain in charge of the camp.
When they had finished the heavy meal and still were all sitting around the central firepit, Gy Linsee spoke. “Uncle Milo, on the hunt you led last fall, you let us into your memories, that we all might learn of how things were in that other world, that world which gave birth to the Sacred Ancestors. But you never allowed us, then, to know all of it—you closed your memories one night after we had learned of your return from a long, terrible war.
“Uncle Milo, I would know the rest of that tale. I would know of how folks lived in those times. I would know of your life, too, in that strange world, teeming with people.”
Milo nodded. “Yes, I recall my promise to you, Gy. I did tell you that if you came with me and Bard Herbuht, I would either tell you the rest of the tale or let you into my memories. I will. We’ll start this night, and since all here are mindspeakers, there will be no need to talk myself hoarse.”
Then he opened his memories.
Chapter II
Five persons accompanied Brigadier General Eustace Barstow back to the United States—Major Milo Moray, Captain Sam Jonas, First Lieutenant Karl Metz (Padre), First Lieutenant Eli Huber (Buck) and Second Lieutenant Elizabeth O’Daley (Betty). Arrived at their destination, Fort Holabird, Maryland, they stayed only a few days, the five of them restricted, under direct orders not to write anyone, telephone anyone, or try to leave the s
mall post for any reason.
While the group were lounging in the officers’ club one early evening, Milo heard a nasal, vaguely familiar voice, let his gaze rove around the room and spotted a pasty, vaguely familiar, face of a captain who was both talking and assiduously gnawing on his nails. After a moment of thought, he placed the voice and the face and hung the proper name upon them. Without another word to his companions, he stood up, pulled his Ike jacket down and straight, then paced deliberately across the shiny floor.
He came to a halt directly in front of the nail-biting officer, clicked his heels together smartly and said, “Guten Abend, mein Herr Sturmbannfuhrer Jarvis. How is it that you’re still wandering around loose without a straitjacket? Remember me? I’m Milo Moray.”
The wan man became even paler, and his muddy-brown eyes widened and his jaw went slack, revealing to Milo that he looked to have not brushed his stained, crooked teeth since last they had met back at Fort Benning years before. His lips finally began to move, but no sounds came from him for a few moments.
Finally, he got wind behind his words. “ … be impersonating an officer of the Army of the United States of America. You can’t be a real officer, simply cannot be! They promised me, swore to me, that you’d never, ever get a commission.”
“So,” growled Milo, “it was you, eh? You were the one who kept getting my promotion requests blocked.”
“Of course I did, Moray, I had to … I just had to, and you know why, too. I thought it all out after you had had me reprimanded and demoted. I realized that I had been right about you from the start.”
The two officers at an adjoining table, to whom Jarvis had been talking, were clearly puzzled, so Milo stated, “Gentlemen, this man was a major in 1942— CID, I think—I was a Regular, first sergeant of a basic-training company. He waltzed in, found out that I speak a number of languages, and proceeded to accuse me of being some kind of Nazi spy or plant. He caused me a good deal of trouble, but I was proved innocent of his groundless charges and returned to duty; he was brought up on charges, and had it not been for the war and some well-placed friends he had, he would probably have been cashiered, let go for the good of the service. As it was, he was, as he just said, reprimanded and demoted to first lieutenant. This is the first time I’ve laid eyes on the lunatic since then.”
Turning back to Jarvis, he said, “Well, you tin-pot Torquemada, so you still think I’m a Nazi, eh?”
“Oh, no, Moray, not anymore, not for years now, not since I thought it all out. I know you for what you really are, now, you see. That was why I exacted certain promises from certain friends in high places, you see. I don’t know . . , I still don’t know just what you are. But I do know you’re not one of us, that you’re not a human being. That’s why I knew that I had to do all that I could to deny you power, deny you control over real people, human people, for as long as I could. I did it for humanity, to protect us all from you.”
Jarvis turned to the two other officers, tense, intent. “You see, Moray … this thing that calls itself Moray … it’s not really a man at all. It’s nonhuman. I know. I sensed it years ago, but now I know, / know. Now he … it will probably kill me because I know, but when I die, you must know that it will be for you, for you and all the rest of real humanity. Can’t you see? Can’t any of you see? He’s inhuman … no, unhuman. I’ve seen him in my dreams—and just ask anybody who knows me, sooner or later my dreams all come true— I’ve seen him walking around in a world where almost all the real human beings are lying dead all around him. All of humanity lying cold and dead, with animals eating their bodies, and him, it, this thing that calls itself Moray, still alive. I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen it. You’ve got to see it! Can’t you see it, really?”
Milo admired the restraint and fast thinking of the older of the two officers. “Possibly, Captain Jarvis, if Bill and I were able to talk to this officer, and, uh, examine him outside, in a less noisy place for a while … ?” Arising, he said, “Major, would you please walk outside with us briefly?”
In the foyer, the lieutenant colonel sighed and shook his head sadly. “Poor Jarvis—he’s never been strung together very tightly, not as long as he’s been here, at any rate, and I would venture a layman’s opinion that he finally went over the edge this evening. You probably triggered it, Major Moray, but don’t feel too bad about it. As I say, it has clearly been coming for a long time.”
Milo nodded. “I was told by a psychiatrist who had interviewed Jarvis that the man was, even back in ‘42, a mental basket case. But I can’t say that I’m sorry about bringing on his dissolution, this way. You both heard him say that he had twisted tails to keep me from being commissioned.”
“And you believe his babble, major?” asked the younger officer.
“I do, captain, simply because someone or something kept me a sergeant for most of the war, kept getting commission request after commission request bounced back marked ‘disapproved.’ The only thing that ever got me commissioned, finally, was combat attrition, and that, well after D-Day. And if those commission requests had not been disapproved, there is a chance that the best friend I ever had would still be alive today. So, no, I’m not in the least sorry if it was my presence, my words, that drove that bastard in there over the edge.
“But what do we do now, colonel?”
The older officer frowned. “Let me make a couple of calls, eh?”
When the captain at last ushered Jarvis out into the foyer, it was emptied of all its usual personnel and any members other than the two captains, the colonel and Milo. Milo’s wrists were secured with handcuffs and a brace of hard-eyed military policemen flanked him.
“What … ?“ began Jarvis.
“There is some reason to suspect that you may be right about this officer, Captain Jarvis,” said the colonel, “I want to take him over and let Major Tatian look him over. Maybe he can tell us whether or not he’s human. If a surgeon can’t, who can, say I. You’ll come with us, of course—since you rode the hunt for so long, I feel you should be there when the fox is driven to ground. Let’s go.”
At the post dispensary, the tired duty officer wasted no time and took no chances. Before Jarvis had stepped more than a few feet beyond the doorsill, there was a big, beefy medical corpsman on either side of him, gently but very firmly gripping his skinny arms with hands the size of hams.
But it did not prove to be that easy, after all. When the third corpsman, smiling and speaking soothing words, began to unbutton Jarvis’ uniform blouse and he saw a fourth approaching with a straitjacket, the slight man shrieked and began to resist with an unsuspected strength, flinging the big, strong men about the room like so many rag dolls. It devolved into a brief battle-royal, finally requiring the full efforts of five corpsmen, the surgeon and the two military policemen to immobilize the raving officer long enough to get the straitjacket on his arms and body and some thick webbing straps buckled around his ankles and legs.
After the patient had been borne off and strapped to a bed, someone at last thought to unlock Milo*s handcuffs. As he rubbed his wrists, Milo thought that the surgeon had come out of the fracas with the least amount of damage—he would have a hellacious black eye, but that was mild when compared to the injuries of his staff members and the two MPs, most of whom looked as if they had been knocked down and run over by a herd of maddened, stampeding horses.
“God be thanked that I thought to trick him into coming over here,” said the colonel with fervor. “Can you imagine what kind of shitstorm a donnybrook like that would’ve whistled up if it had happened in the O-Club? Thank you, Major Moray. You’re one of General Barstow’s staff, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Milo.
The colonel nodded brusquely, “Yes, well, I’ll tell him about all this and mention just how much your cooperation helped us.”
Turning to the surgeon, who was just then preparing to set the apparently broken arm of one of the MPs, he asked, “Well, Eddie, what’ll you do with J
arvis now?”
The medical officer shrugged, then winced, and said, “Hell, we have no facilities for a case like his here, colonel, you know that. Ship him down to the N-P section at Walter Reed, I guess.”
Barstow left Holabird for a few days, and upon his return, he and the five officers he had brought from Germany, plus another lieutenant, three sergeants and four privates, departed Holabird in three Army sedans followed by a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier loaded with their duffel bags, B-bags and other luggage.
Milo had, for some reason, assumed that their destination was either the District of Columbia or the area of Virginia just south of the capital, but he was proved wrong. The small convoy slowly threaded its way through the congested traffic of Washington, crossed the Fourteenth Street Bridge and headed south on Route 1.
In addition to the driver, one of the newcome privates, Milo shared the sedan with Lieutenant Eli Huber and the new officer, Lieutenant Vasili Obrenovich. To the new officer, he said, “You know the lay of the land now better than we do. Where do you think we might be going? Belvoir, maybe? We’re well past Fort Myer.”
“We’re now past where we should’ve turned off this highway for Fort Belvoir, too, sir. I dunno, really. Let’s see now. South of here is Camp Hill, but I doubt we’d be going there. The next real post south after that would be Camp Lee. Sorry I can’t be more help, sir.”
All following the lead automobile, General Barstow’s conveyance, the convoyette proceeded on south on Route 1 in the crisp, late-autumn weather, through northern Virginia. Woodbridge fell behind them, then Dumfries, Quantico and Stafford. They passed through Fredericksburg, Thornburg, Ladysmith, Cedar Forks and Doswell. In the sleepy college town of Ashland, the lead vehicle was seen to pull off the road, and the other four faithfully followed.
After a brief consultation with Barstow, Captain Sam Jonas handed the driver of each of the vehicles a five-dollar bill and ordered them to have their vehicles gassed and serviced at the Shell station across the road, then return, park them and join the rest of the party in the restaurant.
