Hiero Desteen: 01 - Hiero's Journey (31 page)

Brace yourselves; hold Klootz 's legs,
Hiero sent, seeing what was coming. A great wave rushed up the islet's beach, and in an instant the two humans and the bear were waist-deep in the surging water. The priest's warning had come in the nick of time, for the big morse held firm and they with him. Gorm had flung his strong forepaws around a leg as well, and Hiero had held on to both a leg and Luchare.

The water raced back as swiftly as it had come, and the travelers stared out at the transformed lagoon. There was a long smear of oil, a growing slick, and vast rings of racing, foaming ripples, all coming from the place where the Unclean ship had been. Of the ship and its sinister crew, nothing remained. In less than thirty seconds they had been totally obliterated, as if they had never been. Only the small canoe, now half-full of water, lay rocking on the surging water a few hundred feet away, its solitary occupant staring sadly at the fouled area of lagoon.

Hiero let go of Luchare and strode down through the soggy grass and shrubbery to the water's edge. As he reached it, he saw the canoe shooting in toward him, propelled by vigorous strokes of the paddle. In an instant its prow grated on the sand and its tall occupant stepped onto the beach, his vigorous movements belying his apparent age.

The two men stared at each other in appraisal. Hiero looked up at a face so strong and yet so calm that it seemed to have grown almost beyond what could be called human. The very dark brown, almost black, skin was lined by a thousand wrinkles, yet the skin itself was clear and healthy. The broad snub nose surmounted a sweeping, curly mustache which merged into the white beard imperceptibly. The frizzy white locks fell evenly to the old man's shoulders and were neatly combed.

But the eyes were the clue to the whole countenance. Black as night, dancing with light, they seemed to bubble with humor and yet to be grave as a granite monument at one and the same time. They were eyes which loved life, which had seen everything, examined everything, and were still searching for, and finding, new things to examine. In them could be read great age and wisdom and also the gusto and joy of healthy youth.

Hiero was won over on the instant. He extended his right hand, and a long, lean hand met it in a grip as firm as his own, met it and held it.

"Per Desteen, I believe, of the Kandan Universal Church," the deep voice said. "A man currently much sought for, by many sorts of people, for good and ill."

With a shock, Hiero realized that Brother Aldo was speaking Metz, fluently and with no accent at all. Before he could say anything, the old man smiled sheepishly.

"Showing off again, Per Desteen. I used to be good at languages and I learned all I could long ago. And whom have we here?" He turned and gave Luchare a stare as frank as that he had given her lover.

She smiled and held out her hand. "You have killed our enemies. Father, and we thank you for saving us."

"Yes, princess of D'alwah, I had to kill." He sighed, taking her extended hand in his own left, for he still kept Hiero's in his right. He ignored the girl's gasp at his knowledge of her.

"Killing is sometimes necessary," he went on in the same
batwah,
now looking keenly at both of them. "But it ought never to be a pleasure. We do not need to kill for food each day, as do the lower animals. A burden on my mind, all those souls, weary with vice and evil though they were." He released their hands.

"We have much to talk of, we three. Or rather, I should say, we four."
Greeting, friend,
came the thought directed at Gorm, who had ambled up and now sat gazing at the old man.

Greeting, Old One,
the bear brain answered.
We have much to thank you for. A debt is incurred. It will be repaid.

If you feel so, a debt there is,
was the courteous reply.
Now let us speak to one another. l am, as the two humans have heard, Brother Aldo, an Elder, albeit humble, of the Brotherhood of
the Eleventh Commandment. I was sent to find you, if I could, and bring you to a place of safety.

Why?
It was Luchare who asked, her thought pattern ragged, but quite intelligible, evidence of her increasing confidence.

Why?
Brother Aldo looked hard at her.
Have you forgotten one who promised you safety long ago and passed into the enemy's hands to save you?

"How could I?" She broke into speech in her agitation. "You mean Jone, don't you, Father? Is he alive? Did you save him too?"

Yes, I meant Brother Jone, child. And I did not mean to sound so reproving. And although l am indeed vastly older than any of you and probably all of you at once, call me "brother." The fur-man here,
and he indicated Gorm,
knows me as an "Old One. "So I am. But being a father implies responsibility of a kind I don't have or want. A father directs: I guide, at best.

"Per" means "father" in an old language.
Hiero sent in somewhat truculent meaning.

I
know, and I think your church makes a mistake using it. But why do I wander so? I must be getting dimwitted. Let us sit and exchange thoughts.

When they were comfortably arranged on the fast-drying sand, Hiero asked the next question.

Are we still in danger, immediate, I mean?

No, or I should not sit here. My brother out yonder will wait if I choose.
He nodded his head toward the still water. As they looked, first one battered piece of wood broke the quiet ripples and then another. As they watched, a growing collection of flotsam continued to surface.

How do you control that thing? I never dreamed a creature that size existed, or that if it did, that a level of intelligence that low could be mastered.

You have a few things to learn, then, Per Desteen,
was the almost dry answer.
It would take a lot of training to teach you, and I don't mean to disparage your own powers. But it happens, in this case, to be neural rather than cerebral. And it's not always reliable. But let's say that control of our younger brothers and communication with them are and always have been specialties of ours. We are
c
ontinually seeking contact with any life form we can reach.
Brother Aldo wrapped his arms around his knees before continuing.

Look
—
time is important. Before we go further, I need information. This whole part of the world is in a turmoil, mental and physical, and all because of you four. Now, then, Per Desteen, you lead this party. Suppose you tell me briefly what you are doing here and the recent history of this group. I'll try not to interrupt.

Hiero considered briefly. The question was, how much could he trust the Elevener? He had
always liked the men of the order he had met, but this was no quiet teacher or animal doctor, but a most formidable old man, whose mental powers were of an order which made the Metz awe-struck. While he ruminated, Brother Aldo waited patiently.

At length Hiero looked up and met the dark, wise eyes.

"I don't know what the Abbey Council would say, Brother," he said aloud in Metz, without thinking, "but I think you are honorable and trustworthy. I will keep one secret, the reason for my mission, if you please. The rest is yours."

I
appreciate the compliment,
was the mental answer.
Use your mind, please, for it saves time. Also, we must all listen and understand. Do not worry about a mind search by the enemy. That which lairs in the Dead City was withdrawn, both itself and its creatures, the frog Leemutes, as you call them. Nothing else is left to hinder us, at least nearby.

So, as the morning climbed into the sky, Hiero related the history of his journey with Klootz, adding the others as they had joined him. He started at the Abbey with old Abbot Demero and hid nothing, save exactly what it was he had been sent to find. On and on went the story, through the Taig forest, the Palood, the shores of the Inland Sea, the Dead Isle of Manoon, and at last, the coming to the drowned city.

When he was through, Hiero looked at the sun and was amazed that he had only taken about a quarter of an hour, for it had hardly moved.

Brother Aldo sat quietly and stared at the sand. At last, he looked up at all of them.
Well, a good tale. You should all be proud of yourselves. Now I have a tale, less exciting and more historic. But one you should know, indeed, must know, before we go further. And it starts, not two months ago, or even two years, but five thousand and more, in the ancient past, before the coming of The Death.

-

You look about you, children,
came the message from brother Aldo's mind
, and you see, in the world, green forest and glade, blue sea and river, yellow prairie and marsh. In them today lurk evil things, yet they also hold uncounted sorts of beauty and wonder. The singing birds, the breathing plants, the shy animals, the savage hunters, all have a place. Alone and unhindered, they change slowly, one kind yielding place to another over the centuries and millennia. This is the ordered course of nature, the plan as the Creator designed it.

But before The Death, things most rapidly were changing, yes, and for the worst. The entire world, as well as simply here in what was once called North America, was dying. It was being choked, strangled in artificially made filth and its own sickly refuse.
He pointed a lean hand at the ring of ruined towers glaring across the lagoon.

See there! The whole planet, the good round Earth, was being covered by those things! Giant buildings blotted out the sun. The ground was overlain with stone and other hard substances, so that it could not breathe. Vast man-made structures were built everywhere, to make yet more vast structures, and the smoke and stench of the engines and devices used fouled the worlds air in great clouds of poison.
He paused for a moment and looked sad.

This was not all. The Earth itself trembled. Monstrous vessels, to which that Unclean ship of yesterday would be a skiff, fouled the very seas. Overhead, the air vibrated with the rush of great flying machines, whose speed alone, by its vibration, could shatter stone. Along countless stone roads, myriad wheeled machines, carrying ever more goods and people, charged madly along, their poisonous wastes still further fouling the already wearied air.

And then, there were the world's people. The warring, breeding, struggling, senseless people! The peoples of the planet could not, or rather would not, be brought to reason. Not only did they refuse to see how they were killing the life of the world, they could not even see how they were killing themselves! For they bred. Despite vast poverty, great ignorance, disease, and endless wars, humans were still tough! Every year there were more. And more and more, until the cataclysm was inevitable. Wise men warned them, scientists and humanists pleaded with them. God and nature are one, they said, and hence neither is mocked and defied with impunity.

A few listened, indeed more than a few. But not enough. Certain leaders of religion, men ignorant of any science and any learning but their own outdated hagiography, refused to heed. Other men, who controlled the world's wealth and soldiery, wished more power. They wished yet more men both to make and to consume what they sold and still more men to wage the wars which they fomented in the name of one political creed or another. Races warred against races of other colors, white against yellow, black against white.

The end was quite inevitable. It had to come! Men of science who had studied many species of mammals in laboratories of the ancient world had long predicted it. When overpopulation and crowding, dirt and noise, reach a peak, madness remorselessly follows. We today call that madness The Death. Across the whole world, by land, water, and air, total war raged unchecked. Radiation, hideous chemical weapons, and artificially spawned disease slew most of the humans then in existence, and much of the remaining animal life, too.

Nevertheless, a few had taken forethought. When the poisons had partly dissipated (they are not all so yet, even now), a few remnants of our Brotherhood emerged. Most were scientists of the day, specialists in a science called "ecology," which is the interaction of all living things. The Eleventh Commandment, as we call it, not in mockery of the Immemorial Ten, but in succession rather, was formally promulgated. It is simple: Thou shalt not despoil the Earth and the life thereon.

For five thousand years and more, we have watched as humanity
c
limbed upward again, trying our best to aid and guide a natural, decent reascent, one this time in harmony with nature and all life.

We have seen much that was good and much that was not. Many of the pre-Death beasts now have become wise, as wise as humans (if that is wisdom).
He sent a thought at Gorm alone, and Hiero could "feel" the bear's mind shift nervously. Brother Aldo's tale continued.

But long ago, a certain few survivors of other ancient sciences, principally psychology, biochemistry, and physics, also banded together. They sought nothing less than to regain the ancient human domination of the world, which The Death had finally ended. All the machine-made horrors of life which had passed away, to them were beautiful. They took many of the more dangerous, non-lethal mutations (although you call them Leemutes, Per Desteen, that is an error of language corrupted by usage) and bred them to their service and to a hatred of normal humanity, any, that is, not yet under their own evil sway. And these other groups from the past, we call, collectively, the Unclean. A fitting name.