Special Deliverance (20 page)

E
ARLY ON THE MORNING of the second day after Lansing had headed for the inn, the Wailer appeared. It was on the summit of a hill that paralleled the trail and as Lansing strode along, the Wailer kept slow pace with him. When, on occasion, Lansing fell behind, the Wailer halted and sat down ponderously to wait for him. When once he had forged ahead a little, the Wailer loped easily to catch up.

To say the least, this was mildly disconcerting. Lansing did his best not to let it show. Other than a sidelong glance from time to time to keep track of the animal, Lansing attempted to pretend that he was ignoring it. After a while, he told himself, it will give up the game it’s playing with me and go trotting off somewhere. The Wailer, however, did not appear to be of this mind at all.

The mighty beast, more wolflike than it had seemed when they’d seen it on the butte top, had a look of reprehensibility. It was, Lansing figured, an arrant vagabond. So far it had made no hostile move, but that was not to say it wouldn’t. Any moment it could turn into a raging fury. If such should happen, no one could hope to stand against it. Lansing undid the guard of his belt knife so it would be easy to his hand, but had no hope that it would count for much if the animal should charge.

Mary, he thought. Was this great beast the reason that Mary had left the camp? Had it harried her out of it? And where had she gone? Or had she gone anywhere? Had the beast, after playing a silly game with her, finally charged? He bent over, retching at the thought of it.

If she had fled under pressure from the beast, without doubt she would have headed for the inn, for that was the only place that would afford protection. God grant, he prayed, that she had reached it.

The beast was coming closer, edging down the hillside toward him, wagging its tail at him (and a wolf, he remembered, never wags its tail), laughing at him with its lips pulled back, showing a lot of teeth. To gain some distance from it, he left the trail, slanting south and east. The Wailer crossed the trail and followed, paralleling his progress, not coming directly at him but continually edging closer. It drove him south and east.

The game went on for hours. The sun reached noon and started sliding west. Somewhere ahead of him, Lansing knew, flowed the river that, coming from the west, flowed into the badlands stream they had followed. On the point of land between the two rivers stood the inn. He could not allow this beast to drive him beyond the river. If that happened, he would not reach the inn and it then could herd him on and on, until he dropped from exhaustion.

Topping a low ridge late in the afternoon, he saw the river. He went down the slope toward it, the Wailer following. When he reached the river he halted and faced about. The Wailer stood not more than fifty feet away. Lansing lifted the knife from his belt and stood waiting.

“All right,” he asked the Wailer, “what is it going to be?”

The Wailer was huge. It stood ten feet at the shoulder. It lowered its head and thrust out its muzzle and came toward him, pacing slowly, first one slow step and then another. It was shaggy and disreputable. It looked like an unmade bed. And it was big—God, was it big! One snap and it would have him.

Lansing tightened his grip upon the knife, but did not raise it. He did not move a muscle, standing rigid and rooted in the face of the beast’s advance. It edged closer and closer. It thrust out its muzzle, almost reaching him, and snarled.

With an effort, Lansing did not move. He wondered vaguely, marginally, what might have happened had he moved. And was surprised he hadn’t.

The beast took another step. The muzzle now was only a foot or so away. This time there was no snarl. Still gripping the knife, Lansing lifted his free hand and laid it on the muzzle. The ragged beast groaned with pleasure. It moved closer, so that its muzzle pressed against his chest, forcing him back a short step. He stroked the muzzle, reached up and scratched an ear. The beast cocked its head to one side so that ear was easier to reach.

Lansing scratched the ear, and the Wailer held its head so it could be scratched. It mumbled a little in its throat and pushed Lansing back another step as it moved affectionately against him.

“That’s enough,” said Lansing. “I can’t go on petting you all day. I have traveling to do.”

Almost as if it had understood, the great beast grumbled at him. Lansing took another backward step into the river. Then, deliberately, he let his hand fall from the mighty head and, turning about, began to wade the stream.

He kept on wading. The water was like ice. He did not look back until he reached midstream, with the water to his knees. Then he did look back. The Wailer stood forlornly on the shore, looking after him. It took a step, putting one foot in the water, then pulled it back and shook it.

Lansing laughed and went on wading. When he reached dry land, he turned again. The beast still was on the other shore. Seeing Lansing halt and look back, it took two steps into the water, then pulled back and shook itself.

“So long, friend,” said Lansing. Briskly he set out down the river. Half a mile farther on he had another look. The beast still had not crossed the river. Apparently it did not like cold water.

Lansing hurried. Despite what had happened, he told himself, it would not be a bad idea to put as much distance between himself and the Wailer as was possible. It was the sort of beast one could not place much reliance on.

The sun went down, but he did not pause for the night. He kept on walking, occasionally jogging, running at times, intent on covering as much ground as he could. The moon, now slightly past full, shed a cold, white light upon the wilderness. The river gurgled eastward. At dawn he stopped and built a fire, boiled coffee, had something to eat. There was no indication the Wailer was anywhere about.

He was tired and wanted sleep, but after a short time set out again, driving himself down the river. The sun was slanting well into the west when he reached the inn.

The common room was empty, dark and chilly. No blaze burned on the hearth. The card players were not at their table.

Lansing called and there was no answer. Going across the room, he collapsed into a chair before the dead fireplace. He huddled in the chair, worn by fatigue.

After a time, the moon-faced woman in the checkered apron came out of the kitchen.

“Oh,” she said, “so it’s you again.”

He croaked at her. “Was a young woman here? In the last day or two?”

“Oh, yes, indeed she was.”

“And where is she now?”

“She left this morning. Early in the morning.”

“Did you notice where she went? What direction she took?”

“No, I didn’t, sir. I happened to be busy.”

“Did she leave any word? Could she have left a note?”

The woman said, “I believe she did. I put it away. I’ll go and get it.”

She bustled off and Lansing waited. After a time she came back, carrying a bottle and a mug, which she set on the table beside him.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said, “but I cannot find the note. I must have mislaid it.”

He surged to his feet and roared at her. “How could you have mislaid a note? A note that was given you this morning?”

“I do not know how I could have, sir. Apparently I did.”

“Well, look for it, then. Have another look.”

“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said. “It’s not where I thought I put it. It’s not anywhere.”

Lansing sank into the chair. She poured a drink and handed it to him. “I’ll start a fire to warm you and then I’ll cook you something,” she told him. “You probably are hungry.”

“Yes, I am,” growled Lansing.

“The lady,” she said, “had no money…”

“Goddammit,” Lansing shouted, “I’ll pay her bill. Are you sure about that note?”

“Quite certain, sir,” she said.

He sat morosely, drinking, watching her start a fire.

“You’ll be staying the night?” she asked.

“Yes, I will,” he said. “I’ll leave early in the morning.”

Where could Mary have gone? he asked himself. Back to the singing tower to wait, knowing he’d show up? Or back through the badlands to the city? Not back to the city, he thought, certainly not back to the city. Although, perhaps, she might. Just possibly she might. Maybe she had thought of something there that needed more looking into, some facet of the city they had overlooked. But the question was why she hadn’t waited here; certainly she knew that he would follow her.

He sat pondering, turning over and over the thoughts that came to mind. By the time the landlady brought in the food, he’d made his decision. He’d go back to the singing tower and if she were not there, he’d start over again—from the tower back here again and then on to the city. If she was not in the city, he’d go back to the cube. He kept remembering that Mary had always thought the answer lay somewhere in the cube.

H
E WAS WITHIN A few hours of the tower when he met the other two—Jorgenson and Melissa—coming down the trail. There had been no sign of the Waller.

“My God,” said Jorgenson, “I’m glad we found you. There was no one at the tower.”

“No one but Sandra, and she was dead,” Melissa said.

“Where are the other two?” asked Jorgenson.

“Jurgens was lost at Chaos,” Lansing told him, “and I am hunting Mary. You are sure you saw no sign of her?”

“None at all,” said Jorgenson. “Where do you think she could be?”

“She had been at the inn. I thought she might have come back to the tower. Since she hasn’t, I would imagine she is heading for the city.”

“She would have left word for you at the inn,” Melissa said. “You two were very close.”

“She did leave a note. The landlady couldn’t find it. Claimed that she had lost it. I helped her search for it before I left.”

“That’s strange,” said Jorgenson.

“Yes, very strange. Everything here seems to work against us.”

“What happened to Jurgens?” Melissa asked. “I liked him. He was a sweet old soul.”

Swiftly Lansing told them, then asked, “What is in the west? Did you find anything?”

“We found nothing,” Jorgenson told him. “We stayed out a couple of days longer than we had intended, hoping we’d find something. The land is arid, not quite desert. Almost desert. We had water trouble, but we got along.”

“Just empty land,” Melissa said. “You could look for miles—and nothing.”

“Finally we came to the edge of the escarpment we had been traveling across,” said Jorgenson. “Not knowing, of course, we were traveling an escarpment. The land broke down, a long line of cliffs, and there, far as we could see, was desert. Real desert; sand and that was all. It stretched away as far as we could see and it was emptier, if that was possible, than the land we’d crossed. So we came back.”

“Chaos north and nothing west,” said Lansing. “That leaves the south, but I’m not going south. I’m going to the city; I think that Mary’s there.”

“It’s almost sunset,” said Jorgenson. “Why don’t we camp? Start out in the morning. Decide what we should do and start out in the morning.”

“I’m willing,” Lansing said. “There’s no sense in going to the tower since you just left. Tell me about Sandra. Did you bury her?”

Melissa shook her head. “We talked about it, but we couldn’t. To bury her seemed not quite right. We decided we should leave her where she was. She is little better than a mummy. I think she died as she would have wanted to. We thought it best to leave her.”

Lansing nodded. “My thoughts were much the same. I even wondered if she’d died. It seemed to me, looking at her, that she had only gone away. The life of her, the spirit of her, going somewhere else, leaving a withered, worthless husk behind.”

“I think that you are right,” Melissa said. “I can’t put it into words, but I think that you are right. She stood apart from all of us; she was never one of us. What would be right for us would not be right for her.”

They built a fire, cooked food, boiled coffee and ate, crouched around the fire. The moon came up, the stars came out and the night was lonely.

Holding the coffee mug in both his hands, sipping occasionally at the brew, Lansing thought back to Chaos and to Jurgens, principally to Jurgens. Had there been, he asked himself, anything that he could have done to save the robot? Had there been some way, if he only had been able to think well and fast enough, that he could have walked down the sloping sand to catch his sliding friend and haul him back to safety? His mind was blank as to any suggestion of how he might have done it. Yet he could not escape the sense of guilt that rose up to choke him; he had been there. Certainly there had been some action that he could have taken. He had tried, of course; he had ventured out on the sliding sand slope, he had had a try at it, but that had not been good enough. He had tried and failed, and failure itself spelled out to guilt.

And what of Jurgens now? Where had he gone, where was he now? He, Lansing, had not even paid his friend the courtesy of watching where he’d gone. He had been busy at the time, trying to save himself, but be that as it may, he somehow should have managed to note what had happened to the robot. It seemed, he told himself sourly, that there was no end to guilt. Whatever a man might do, there was always guilt.

The assumption must be that Jurgens had kept on sliding, unable to stop the slide, until he came to that point where the black curtain of roaring Chaos (whatever Chaos might be) came down to meet the sand. And what happened then? What was it Jurgens had said just before the fall? The end of everything. There goes the universe. Eaten by the blackness. Had Jurgens known? Or had he been only talking? There was no way to know.

It was strange, Lansing thought, the ways they had been lost. The Parson walking through a door. The Brigadier being taken up (taken up?) by the two banks of machines crooning to themselves. Sandra sucked dry of life by a singing tower. Jurgens sliding into Chaos. And Mary—Mary walking off. But as yet Mary was not gone—at least so far as he knew, she was not gone as the others now were gone. There still was hope for Mary.

Jorgenson asked, “Lansing, what is going on? You seem deep in thought.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Lansing said, “of what we should do come morning.”

He had not been thinking that, but it was something he could say to answer Jorgenson.

“I suppose back to the city,” said Jorgenson. “That’s what you indicated.”

“You will come with me?” Lansing asked.

“I won’t go to the city,” Melissa said. “I was in the city once and—”

“You won’t go to the city and you won’t go north,” said Jorgenson. “There are too many places you refuse to go. Much more of this, by Jesus, and I’m walking off and leaving you. You’re bitching all the time.”

“I think we could save some time,” said Lansing, “by going cross-country.”

“What do you mean, cross-country?”

“Well, look,” said Lansing. He put down the cup and with the palm of one hand smoothed out a place in the sand. With an extended forefinger he began to draw a map. “When we left the city we traveled the badlands trail. We were going slightly west, but mostly north. Then when we left the inn, we traveled straight west to the tower. It seems to me there should be a shorter way.”

He had drawn one line to represent the badlands trail, another, at right angles to it, between the inn and tower. Now he made another mark, connecting the tower and city. “If we went that way, there’d be less ground to cover. A triangle, you see. Instead of traveling two legs of it, we’d travel only one. Head southeast.”

“We’d be in unknown country,” Jorgenson protested. “No trail to follow. We’d get tangled in the badlands. We would lose our way.”

“We could maintain our bearing with compass readings. It might be we would miss the badlands. They may not extend this far west. It would be a shorter way to go.”

“I don’t know,” said Jorgenson.

“I do. That’s the way I’m going. Will you come along?”

Jorgenson hesitated for a long moment, then he said, “Yes, we’ll come along.”

They set out at early dawn. An hour or so later they crossed the eastward-running river that some miles later would flow past the bin. They crossed at a shallow ford, barely getting wet.

The character of the land began to change. It went in a gentle slope upward from the river, marked by long ridges, each ridge rising higher than the last. It became less arid. There was less sand, more grass. Trees began to appear and as they climbed each successive ridge, the trees increased in number and in size. In some of the small valleys that separated the ridges, tiny creeks made their way, clear, sparkling water chattering over rocky courses.

Toward the end of the day they topped one ridge that stood considerably higher than those they had been crossing and saw, spread out before them, a valley somewhat wider and more lush than the others they had seen—a green valley with many trees and, far below, a river of respectable size. A short distance up the valley, toward the west, thin curls of smoke spiraled up into the air.

“People,” said Jorgenson. “There must be people there.”

He started moving forward, but Lansing put out a hand to halt him.

“What’s the matter?” asked Jorgenson.

“We don’t go rushing in.”

“But I tell you, there are people.”

“I suppose there are. But we don’t go rushing in. Neither do we sneak up. We let them know we’re here and give them a chance to look us over.”

“You know about everything,” said Jorgenson, sneering.

“Not everything,” Lansing told him. “Only common sense. Either we give them a chance to look us over or we sneak around them, pass them by.”

“I think we should go in,” Melissa said. “Mary may be there. Or someone might know something of her.”

“That’s unlikely,” Lansing said. “I’m convinced she headed for the city. She’d have no occasion to come this way.”

“We’re going in,” said Jorgenson, a belligerent tone in his voice. “Someone may know what is going on. If so, it’ll be the first time we’ve known since we came here.”

“Okay,” said Lansing. “We’ll go in.”

They went down the hill until they reached the valley, went slowly up it, toward the smoke. Up ahead someone saw them and shouted warning. The three halted and stood waiting. In a short time a small group of people, ten or so, appeared, making their way down the valley toward them. The crowd stopped and three men walked forward.

Lansing, standing in front of Jorgenson and Melissa, studied the three as they approached. One of them was old. His hair and beard were white. The other two were younger—one a blond youth with yellow beard and hair that hung down to his shoulders, the other a grim, dark-visaged, dark-haired man. He wore no beard, but the stubble on his face was heavy; he had not shaved for several days. Their clothing was in tatters, elbows out, holes in the knees of their trousers, rips and tears inexpertly sewed together. The old man wore what appeared to be a vest of rabbit fur.

The three halted only a few paces away. The yellow-haired man spoke in a strange tongue.

“Heathen talk,” said Jorgenson. “Why can’t he speak English?”

“Foreign, not heathen,” Lansing said. “German, at a guess. Do any of you speak English?”

“I speak it,” the old man said. “I and a couple of others in the camp. Your guess is correct. My young friend does speak German. Pierre, here, speaks French. I can understand both fairly well. My name is Allen Correy. I would suppose you might have come from the tower. You must have lost your way.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Lansing, “we are heading for the city.”

“For what reason?” Correy asked. “There is nothing there. All of us know that.”

“He’s hunting for a lost girl friend,” said Jorgenson. “He has the idea she may be going there.”

“In that case,” Correy said to Lansing, “I sincerely hope you find her. You know how to get there?”

“Southeast,” said Lansing. “That should get us there.”

“Yes, I think it will,” said Correy.

“Do you know anything about the country up ahead?”

“Only for a few miles. We stay fairly close to camp. We do not wander far.”

“You are people, I suppose, the same as us. I don’t know what to call us. I’ve never thought about that. But people who were brought here.”

“We are part of them,” said Correy. “There may be other bands like us, but if so, we don’t know where they are. You know, of course, that few of us survive. We are a small group of survivors. There are thirty-two of us here. Twelve men, the rest are women. Some of us have been here for years.”

The dark-visaged Frenchman spoke to him, and Correy said to Lansing, “You will pardon me. I forgot my manners. Will you not come into camp and join us? It will be dark before too long and supper now is cooking. We have a huge pot of rabbit stew and plenty of fish to fry. I wouldn’t be surprised if there should be a salad, although we are long since out of dressing and must do with hot cooking fat. I must warn you also we are short of salt. Long since we have become accustomed to the lack, and it no longer bothers us.”

“Nor will it bother us,” Melissa told him. “We accept your invitation gladly.”

A short distance up the valley, as they rounded a grove of trees that had hidden it, they came upon a cornfield with a few shocks of harvested stalks still standing in it. Beyond the field, in a sheltered cove formed by a sharp bend in the river’s course, stood a collection of rude huts and a few tattered, weatherbeaten tents. Fires were burning and small groups of waiting people stood about.

Correy gestured at the cornfield. “It’s a poor thing at the best, but we take good care of it and each season harvest enough to take us through the winter. We also have a rather extensive garden plot. Mrs. Mason secured for us the seed corn and the seeds we needed to plant the garden.”

“Mrs. Mason?” Melissa asked.

“She is the landlady at the inn,” said Correy. “A grasping soul, but she has cooperated with us. At times she sends recruits, people of our sort who have nowhere else to go and gravitate back to the inn. She doesn’t want them there unless they have money they can spend. Few of them do, so she gets rid of them by sending them to us. However, our population does not grow by any appreciable number. There are deaths, especially in the bitter winter months. We have, among other things, a growing cemetery.”