Meanwhile, the mapping roboprobes were pulled in to be overhauled and reprogrammed, and then sent out again. With the topography known in detail, the probes could be sent through the mists on low-level patrols without fear of banging into a concealed mountain. The sensing equipment carried by the probes was not the equal of that in the wraith traps, of course. But the probes had a much greater range, and could cover thousands of square miles each day.
Finally, when the wraith traps were deployed and the roboprobes were in the air, Dubowski and his men took to the mist forests themselves. Each carried a heavy backpack of sensors and detection devices. The human search teams had more mobility than the wraith traps, and more sophisticated equipment than the probes. They covered a different area each day, in painstaking detail.
I went along on a few of those trips, with a backpack of my own. It made for some interesting copy, even though we never found anything. And while on search, I fell in love with the mist forests.
The tourist literature likes to call them “the ghastly mist forests of haunted Wraithworld.” But they’re not ghastly. Not really. There’s a strange sort of beauty there, for those who can appreciate it.
The trees are thin and very tall, with white bark and pale gray leaves. But the forests are not without color. There’s a parasite, a hanging moss of some sort, that’s very common, and it drips from the overhanging branches in cascades of dark green and scarlet. And there are rocks, and vines, and low bushes choked with misshapen purplish fruits.
But there’s no sun, of course. The mists hide everything. They swirl and slide around you as you walk, caressing you with unseen hands, clutching at your feet.
Once in a while, the mists play games with you. Most of the time you walk through a thick fog, unable to see more than a few feet in any direction, your own shoes lost in the mist carpet below. Sometimes, though, the fog closes in suddenly. And then you can’t see at all. I blundered into more than one tree when that happened.
At other times, though, the mists—for no apparent reason—will roll back suddenly, and leave you standing alone in a clear pocket within a cloud. That’s when you can see the forest in all its grotesque beauty. It’s a brief, breathtaking glimpse of never-never land. Moments like that are few and short-lived. But they stay with you.
They stay with you.
In those early weeks, I didn’t have much time for walking in the forests, except when I joined a search team to get the feel of it. Mostly I was busy writing. I did a series on the history of the planet, highlighted by the stories of the most famous sightings. I did feature profiles on some of the more colorful members of the expedition. I did a piece on Sanders, and the problems he encountered and overcame in building Castle Cloud. I did science pieces on the little known about the planet’s ecology. I did mood pieces about the forests and the mountains. I did speculative thought pieces about the ruins. I wrote about rockcat hunting, and mountain climbing, and the huge and dangerous swamp lizards native to some offshore islands.
And, of course, I wrote about Dubowski and his search. On that I wrote reams.
Finally, however, the search began to settle down into dull routine, and I began to exhaust the myriad other topics Wraithworld offered. My output began to decline. I started to have time on my hands.
That’s when I really began to enjoy Wraithworld. I began to take daily walks through the forests, ranging wider each day. I visited the ruins, and flew half a continent away to see the swamp lizards firsthand instead of by holo. I befriended a group of hunters passing through, and shot myself a rockcat. I accompanied some other hunters to the western seacoast, and nearly got myself killed by a plains devil.
And I began to talk to Sanders again.
Through all of this, Sanders had pretty well ignored me and Dubowski and everyone else connected with the wraith research. He spoke to us grudgingly, if at all, greeted us curtly, and spent all his free time with his other guests.
At first, after the way he had talked in the bar that night, I worried about what he might do. I had visions of him murdering someone out in the mists, and trying to make it look like a wraith killing. Or maybe just sabotaging the wraith traps. But I was sure he would try something to scare off Dubowski or otherwise undermine the expedition.
Comes of watching too much holovision, I guess. Sanders did nothing of the sort. He merely sulked, glared at us in the castle corridors, and gave us less than full cooperation at all times.
After a while, though, he began to warm up again. Not toward Dubowski and his men.
Just toward me.
I guess that was because of my walks in the forests. Dubowski never went out into the mists unless he had to. And then he went out reluctantly, and came back quickly. His men followed their chief’s example. I was the only joker in the deck. But then, I wasn’t really part of the same deck.
Sanders noticed, of course. He didn’t miss much of what went on in his castle. And he began to speak to me again. Civilly. One day, finally, he even invited me for drinks again.
It was about two months into the expedition. Winter was coming to Wraithworld and Castle Cloud, and the air was getting cold and crisp. Dubowski and I were out on the dining balcony, lingering over coffee after another superb meal. Sanders sat at a nearby table, talking to some tourists.
I forget what Dubowski and I were discussing. Whatever it was, Dubowski interrupted me with a shiver at one point. “It’s getting cold out here,” he complained. “Why don’t we move inside?” Dubowski never liked the dining balcony very much.
I sort of frowned. “It’s not that bad,” I said. “Besides, it’s nearly sunset. One of the best parts of the day.”
Dubowski shivered again, and stood up. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But I’m going in. I don’t feel like catching a cold just so you can watch another mistfall.”
He started to walk off. But he hadn’t taken three steps before Sanders was up out of his seat, howling like a wounded rockcat.
“Mistfall,” he bellowed. “Mistfall!” He launched into a long, incoherent string of obscenities. I had never seen Sanders so angry, not even when he threw me out of the bar that first night. He stood there, literally trembling with rage, his face flushed, his fat fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
I got up in a hurry, and got between them. Dubowski turned to me, looking baffled and scared. “Wha—” he started.
“Get inside,” I interrupted. “Get up to your room. Get to the lounge. Get somewhere. Get anywhere. But get out of here before he kills you.”
“But—but—what’s wrong? What happened? I don’t—”
“Mistfall is in the morning,” I told him. “At night, at sunset, it’s mistrise. Now go.”
“That’s all? Why should that get him so—so—”
“GO!”
Dubowski shook his head, as if to say he still didn’t understand what was going on. But he went.
I turned to Sanders. “Calm down,” I said. “Calm down.”
He stopped trembling, but his eyes threw blaster bolts at Dubowski’s back. “Mistfall,” he muttered. “Two months that bastard has been here, and he doesn’t know the difference between mistfall and mistrise.”
“He’s never bothered to watch either one,” I said. “Things like that don’t interest him. That’s his loss, though. No reason for you to get upset about it.”
He looked at me, frowning. Finally he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.” He sighed. “But mistfall! Hell.” There was a short silence, then, “I need a drink. Join me?”
I nodded.
We wound up in the same dark corner as the first night, at what must have been Sanders’ favorite table. He put away three drinks before I had finished my first. Big drinks. Everything in Castle Cloud was big.
There were no arguments this time. We talked about mistfall, and the forests, and the ruins. We talked about the wraiths, and Sanders lovingly told me the stories of the great sightings. I knew them all already, of cour
se. But not the way Sanders told them.
At one point, I mentioned that I’d been born in Bradbury when my parents were spending a short vacation on Mars. Sanders’ eyes lit up at that, and he spent the next hour or so regaling me with Earthman jokes. I’d heard them all before, too. But I was getting more than a little drunk, and somehow they all seemed hilarious.
After that night, I spent more time with Sanders than with anyone else in the hotel. I thought I knew Wraithworld pretty well by that time. But that was an empty conceit, and Sanders proved it. He showed me hidden spots in the forests that have haunted me ever since. He took me to island swamps, where the trees are of a very different sort and sway horridly without a wind. We flew to the far north, to another mountain range where the peaks are higher and sheathed in ice, and to a southern plateau where the mists pour eternally over the edge in a ghostly imitation of a waterfall.
I continued to write about Dubowski and his wraith hunt, of course. But there was little new to write about, so most of my time was spent with Sanders. I didn’t worry too much about my output. My Wraithworld series had gotten excellent play on Earth and most of the colony worlds, so I thought I had it made.
Not so.
I’d been on Wraithworld just a little over three months when my syndicate beamed me. A few systems away, a civil war had broken out on a planet called New Refuge. They wanted me to cover it. No news was coming out of Wraithworld anyway, they said, since Dubowski’s expedition still had over a year to run.
Much as I liked Wraithworld, I jumped at the chance. My stories had been getting a little stale, and I was running out of ideas, and the New Refuge thing sounded like it could be very big.
So I said goodbye to Sanders and Dubowski and Castle Cloud, and took a last walk through the mist forests, and booked passage on the next ship through.
The New Refuge civil war was a firecracker. I spent less than a month on the planet, but it was a dreary month. The place had been colonized by religious fanatics, but the original cult had schismed, and both sides accused the other of heresy. It was all very dingy. The planet itself had all the charm of a Martian suburb.
I moved on as quickly as I could, hopping from planet to planet, from story to story. In six months, I had worked myself back to Earth. Elections were coming up, so I got slapped onto a political beat. That was fine by me. It was a lively campaign, and there was a ton of good stories to be mined.
But throughout it all, I kept myself up on the little news that came out of Wraithworld. And finally, as I’d expected, Dubowski announced a press conference. As the syndicate’s resident wraith, I got myself assigned to cover it, and headed out on the fastest starship I could find.
I got there a week before the conference, ahead of everyone else. I had beamed Sanders before taking ship, and he met me at the spaceport. We adjourned to the dining balcony, and had our drinks served out there.
“Well?” I asked him, after we had traded amenities. “You know what Dubowski’s going to announce?”
Sanders looked very glum. “I can guess,” he said. “He called in all his damn gadgets a month ago, and he’s been cross-checking findings on a computer. We’ve had a couple of wraith sightings since you left. Dubowski moved in hours after each sighting, and went over the areas with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing. That’s what he’s going to announce, I think. Nothing.”
I nodded. “Is that so bad, though? Gregor found nothing.”
“Not the same,” Sanders said. “Gregor didn’t look the way Dubowski has. People will believe him, whatever he says.”
I wasn’t so sure of that, and was about to say so, when Dubowski arrived. Someone must have told him I was there. He came striding out on the balcony, smiling, spied me, and came over to sit down.
Sanders glared at him and studied his drink. Dubowski trained all of his attention on me. He seemed very pleased with himself. He asked what I’d been doing since I left, and I told him, and he said that was nice.
Finally I got to ask him about his results. “No comment,” he said. “That’s what I’ve called the press conference for.”
“C’mon,” I said. “I covered you for months when everybody else was ignoring the expedition. You can give me some kind of beat. What have you got?”
He hesitated. “Well, okay,” he said doubtfully. “But don’t release it yet. You can beam it out a few hours ahead of the conference. That should be enough time for a beat.”
I nodded agreement. “What do you have?”
“The wraiths,” he said. “I have the wraiths, bagged neatly. They don’t exist. I’ve got enough evidence to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.” He smiled broadly.
“Just because you didn’t find anything?” I started. “Maybe they were avoiding you. If they’re sentient, they might be smart enough. Or maybe they’re beyond the ability of your sensors to detect.”
“Come now,” Dubowski said. “You don’t believe that. Our wraith traps had every kind of sensor we could come up with. If the wraiths existed, they would have registered on something. But they didn’t. We had the traps planted in the areas where three of Sanders’ so-called sightings took place. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Conclusive proof that those people were seeing things. Sightings, indeed.”
“What about the deaths, the vanishings?” I asked. “What about the Gregor Expedition and the other classic cases?”
His smile spread. “Couldn’t disprove all the deaths, of course. But our probes and our searches turned up four skeletons.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Two were killed by a rockslide, and one had rockcat claw marks on the bones.”
“The fourth?”
“Murder,” he said. “The body was buried in a shallow grave, clearly by human hands. A flood of some sort had exposed it. It was down in the records as a disappearance. I’m sure all the other bodies could be found, if we searched long enough. And we’d find that all died perfectly normal deaths.”
Sanders raised his eyes from his drink. They were bitter eyes. “Gregor,” he said stubbornly. “Gregor and the other classics.”
Dubowski’s smile became a smirk. “Ah, yes. We searched that area quite thoroughly. My theory was right. We found a tribe of apes nearby. Big brutes. Like giant baboons, with dirty white fur. Not a very successful species, either. We found only one small tribe, and they were dying out. But clearly, that was what Gregor’s man sighted. And exaggerated all out of proportion.”
There was silence. Then Sanders spoke, but his voice was beaten. “Just one question,” he said softly. “Why?”
That brought Dubowski up short, and his smile faded. “You never have understood, have you, Sanders?” he said. “It was for truth. To free this planet from ignorance and superstition.”
“Free Wraithworld?” Sanders said. “Was it enslaved?”
“Yes,” Dubowski answered. “Enslaved by foolish myth. By fear. Now this planet will be free, and open. We can find out the truth behind those ruins now, without murky legends about half-human wraiths to fog the facts. We can open this planet for colonization. People won’t be afraid to come here, and live, and farm. We’ve conquered the fear.”
“A colony world? Here?” Sanders looked amused. “Are you going to bring big fans to blow away the mists, or what? Colonists have come before. And left. The soil’s all wrong. You can’t farm here, with all these mountains. At least not on a commercial scale. There’s no way you can make a profit growing things on Wraithworld.
“Besides, there are hundreds of colony worlds crying for people. Did you need another so badly? Must Wraithworld become yet another Earth?”
He shook his head sadly, drained his drink, and continued. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Doctor. Don’t kid yourself. You haven’t freed Wraithworld. You’ve destroyed it. You’ve stolen its wraiths, and left an empty planet.”
Dubowski shook his head. “I think you’re wrong. They’ll find plenty of good, profitable ways to exploit this planet. But even if you were correct, well, it’s jus
t too bad. Knowledge is what man is all about. People like you have tried to hold back progress since the beginning of time. But they failed, and you failed. Man needs to know.”
“Maybe,” Sanders said. “But is that the only thing man needs? I don’t think so. I think he also needs mystery, and poetry, and romance. I think he needs a few unanswered questions to make him brood and wonder.”
Dubowski stood up abruptly, and frowned. “This conversation is as pointless as your philosophy, Sanders. There’s no room in my universe for unanswered questions.”
“Then you live in a very drab universe, Doctor.”
“And you, Sanders, live in the stink of your own ignorance. Find some new superstitions if you must. But don’t try to foist them off on me with your tales and legends. I’ve got no time for wraiths.” He looked at me. “I’ll see you at the press conference,” he said. Then he turned and walked briskly from the balcony.
Sanders watched him depart in silence, then swiveled in his chair to look out over the mountains. “The mists are rising,” he said.
Sanders was wrong about the colony too, as it turned out. They did establish one, although it wasn’t much to boast of. Some vineyards, some factories, and a few thousand people; all belonging to a couple of big companies.
Commercial farming did turn out to be unprofitable, you see. With one exception—a native grape, a fat gray thing the size of a lemon. So Wraithworld has only one export, a smoky white wine with a mellow, lingering flavor.
They call it mistwine, of course. I’ve grown fond of it over the years. The taste reminds me of mistfall somehow, and makes me dream. But that’s probably me, not the wine. Most people don’t care for it much.
Still, in a very minor way, it’s a profitable item. So Wraithworld is still a regular stop on the spacelanes. For freighters, at least.
The tourists are long gone, though. Sanders was right about that. Scenery they can get closer to home, and cheaper. The wraiths were why they came.
Sanders is long gone, too. He was too stubborn and too impractical to buy in on the mistwine operations when he had the chance. So he stayed behind his ramparts at Castle Cloud until the last. I don’t know what happened to him afterward, when the hotel finally went out of business.
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