The Visitor (40 page)

“At first they froze bits of the dead or dying in glaciers, in ice walls. Then, taking advantage of their beliefs, the demons showed them how to build bottle walls with nutrient pumps and traded them the technology in return for a non-aggression treaty. For centuries, every person in Bastion has been bottled either after he dies or immediately before he is
disposed of, unless, that is, he disappears, leaving no living cells behind.

“This allows the Regime to bottle anyone they please and dispose of the actual person. The Dicta say that the person is present in the bottle, and when the world ends, the Rebel Angels will re-embody the person from the cell.”

“But the ouphs come,” cried Dezmai. “Weeping for their lives that are gone and their rest that has been taken from them!” Her voice was like wind, surging through their senses in a great gust, then gone.

The doctor said, “Dismé! Quietly.”

“It wasn't me,” she whispered. “I can't control
her
.”

After a moment's silence, Rankivian asked, “What are ouphs?”

After waiting, to be sure Dezmai wasn't coming back, Dismé said, “The unquiet spirits of those in the wall. They come singly or in a mass, like fog or a bank of mist. They slide along the walls where their patterns are kept. I have heard them grieving endlessly for life that is not lived, for a return that is withheld. They can neither live nor rest.”

Rankivian nodded. “Yes, they would grieve. Their patterns are being imprisoned rather than released into the great pattern. All life is in the great pattern. Each microbe has its tiny spiral, each sparrow its arc of flight, no matter whether the life is self-aware or not. The pattern is generated by the universe along the time front, emerging ever richer and more ramified. For the aware, to feel oneself part of the pattern is heaven. For the unaware, it is the totality of being. For the unaware, to be withheld from the great pattern is sadness; for the aware, it is hell.”

“The ouphs play at being people,” said Dismé, softly, looking over her shoulder, as the doctor had.

Shadua whispered, “Can that happen?”

Arnole spoke, also quietly. “As a young man, when I was a menial who cleaned the offices in the fortress at Bastion, I lived in cheap lodging behind the Fortress. I often saw ouphs there, frequenting abandoned neighborhoods where they slid along vacant sidewalks arm-in-arm. There was a dilapi
dated theater where the ouphs queued up or sat within, as though witnessing performances. They held tea parties in abandoned houses where they sat in ramshackle chairs beside broken tables to pour invisible tea…”

“Why?” Dismé asked. “What were they doing?”

“I don't know. No one saw them but myself. I learned not to speak of them, for doing so drew too much attention to me. I couldn't risk being thought a madman, for crazies are bottled as soon as symptoms present themselves. Instead of reporting them, I followed them and watched them. Their forays always ended in one of two ways. Suddenly, the event would be over and they would slide off in different directions, like leaves scudding on a pond. Or, sometimes, they would be drawn into a kind of vortex, as though sucked up by some unimaginable force.”

“I've seen that,” cried Dismé. “They scream as they go, thin voices like the blades of knives, as though something were eating them!”

“Ah,” said Shadua. “I see! They repeat little plays they were accustomed to. They go here and there. They play at eating or drinking. Their patterns remember that much, and those with similar patterns gather together because it feels companionable.”

“Is the memory in the cells?” demanded the doctor in an astonished tone.

“Is the wine in the empty bottle?” asked Yun. “No, but the bottle still smells of the wine. And if Dezmai and Bertral both saw them, then perhaps all of us who were destined to be Guardians could have seen them, if we had looked…”

He fell silent, for Nell had run into their midst, her eyes wild. “Dismé,” she cried. “Come with me, now. You were right, doctor. Something dreadful, dreadful…” And seizing Dismé by the hand, she drew her away toward the height.

“What happened?” whispered Yun.

The doctor answered, also in a whisper. “I told Nell about the mutilated people we've been finding in Hold. I told her what I had inferred from the evidence, that pain is what empowers whoever is behind all this butchery. With that to look
for, Elnith must have heard something, or sensed something, however she does it. It's a power only she has. Now Nell's going back up on the hill because she can…receive the information better from up there…”

“Why did she take Dismé?” demanded Michael, who had been listening to all their discussion from among the shadows.

“Dismé has a dobsi,” said Arnole. “It is likely Elnith needs her to send a message.”

 

Inside the shieldwall of Hold, near the road that runs northeast to Praise, a room was set aside for demon business, a place where the dead and nearly dead were put to await their bottling. There, on sixday morning, the triage demon came to a particular body which she listed among the recently dead, those who could still have flesh taken for bottling. As she wrote, however, something about the choice troubled her, and she paused, staring at the lax form for some time.

“This one isn't dead,” she said.

“It isn't breathing,” muttered one of her colleagues.

“Well, it really is breathing, though you can barely detect it. Plus, there's healing going on. See the cut on the face. See there, at the edges. That's new flesh.”

The other made a face. “I wouldn't want to be alive, like that. Chasm knows what was done to it.”

“You're right. Chasm might know. I think we'll send the body there.”

“You're out of your mind. Chasm will have a fit!”

“No they won't. They particularly want to see victims like this. They collect them. There've been many of these cases lately, and Chasm wants to know why. Maybe this person knows.”

“Her tongue is gone, she can't speak. Her hands are gone, she can't write.”

“Chasm has machines that can read Dantisfan emissions as though they were print. Call for pick up, pack it up, and get it on the road.”

Shrugging, the other complied. When they left the room
to go out into the air, bottles clinking as they headed for the bottle wall and the forest, the person's body was among some other living persons, hidden beneath straw mats in the wagon. As they approached the bottle wall, none of the demons noticed the fog of ouphs that descended upon them, nor did they feel the presence of a subservient entity who was searching the vicinity for what remained of a sacrifice.

A
t the pass where the army of Bastion was camped, the supply wagons arrived toward midafternoon. They were met with considerable eagerness by the men, though any eagerness the officers might have felt was diluted by their suspicion that either the general's visitation had been fictional or his interpretation of that visitation had been faulty. The bishop's belligerence was coming off the simmer into a full boil when the general came from his tent and summoned them with a gesture.

“They'll come tonight,” he said crisply, when the bishop, the commander, and a group of others had arrived. “I should have remembered: the angel of fire always comes in the dark. We marched all night, so of course we couldn't have gone to battle immediately. We should be ready to march at sundown. The Quellers will arrive then. They fight in the dark.”

With the pronouncement, he returned to his tent, leaving the others to look at one another with slightly raised eyebrows but without comment. If any part of their current situation made sense, then what the general had just said also made sense. Several of them huddled together to discuss the matter only to be interrupted by an outrider who pulled his horse to a stop nearby, dismounted and came running toward the commander.

“What?” barked Rascan.

“There's a peak up there to the north, sir. Goes up well above timberline and gives a good view of the country in all directions. There's people leaving Bastion, or at least leaving from the direction of Bastion, though they might have been forest dwellers up in the hills who saw our march and decided to get out of the area.”

“How many?” demanded the bishop.

“Hard to say, sir. We only see them when they cross open ground, and there's not a lot of open ground up this way. I shouldn't think enough to worry about. As I say, probably just farmers from up there, decided to get out of the way of any battle that might take place.”

“Then why didn't they go into Bastion instead of away from it?” demanded the bishop.

Wisely, the outrider offered no interpretation.

Rascan said, “Keep your eyes open. Let us know if anything changes.”

The outrider went back to his horse and left the area at a trot, passing a sizeable number of demons and rebels who had been alerted by Jens Ladislav and had been hidden in the forest before the army arrived. Some were mountain people, unencumbered by baggage and able to move very quickly. The demons among them could hear and speak at a distance, and all of them were assigned to follow the army, to overhear its plans, and to carry that information forward while the rebels spread out to inform any farm or hamlet close enough to be in danger.

Elsewhere, on other roads leading toward other passes, wagons, flocks, and herds were leaving Bastion by hundreds and thousands. Within several days there wouldn't be a farmer or his produce, a stockman or his animals, a craftsman or his tools left in the country. Those leaving, in fact, included about ninety-eight percent of the useful inhabitants and one hundred percent of those who could actually do magic.

On Ogre's Gap, the warriors of Bastion had been fed, which made them feel less weary and ill-treated, and when
the sun fell toward evening, they began to assemble their gear and repack it for the march. A number of the general's own guardsmen had been told to move quietly through the camp to form a line around the so-called strengtheners, though it was a line half-hidden in shadow. At Ogre's Gap the dark would come early, for the great peaks that thrust themselves into the western sky intercepted the lowering sun to cast deep shadow across the nearer mountains, plunging the meadow into dusk while the lowlands of Comador and Turnaway still basked in light.

As shadow came, so came an ominous quiet among the men. Even the officers took to looking over their shoulder, as though something dangerous might be descending upon them from the open air, or from among the trees on the darkling slopes of the mountains. With the dark came a cold wind from the forest, one that sent sparks fleeing from the campfires and silenced the men who'd been warming themselves. Officers came from their lantern-lit tents into the night, fastening their armor and testing the edges of their swords with their eyes fixed on the ceaseless movement of the wind-stirred trees. The first sound of something approaching came from among those trees, over the ridge, the loud cracking snap of large branches.

The sound dropped into absolute silence, for every man on the meadow was holding his breath. Next came the rattle smash of broken wood, a whuffling and snorting such as a huge pig might make as it came through the trees, which again cracked and crashed, broken trees falling outward into the Gap as something monstrous emerged from cover, elephantine and black, its arms reaching to the ground, its knees half-bent, crouching forward to sniff the soil, then rising to full height, arms raised, only to fall once more onto its knuckles as its head turned from side to side, nostrils wide, sniffing.

The wind blew from behind it, and the stench of it came in waves that made the waiting soldiers gasp with dizziness, as though being suffocated. The creature bellowed, and though no words could be discerned in that great rush of
sound, each person present understood the howl to have meant, “Where are my strengtheners?”

The hundred or so men who had been nominated, including Captain Trublood, turned to flee, but the general had foreseen this possibility when he set his spearmen behind them. They were chivvied forward at spearpoint, pressed back toward the place the monster waited. Nearest the beast was Fremis, the great warrior, who spun toward the monster and, as it grabbed for him, jabbed his spear upward with all his strength into the huge, hairy belly. The howled response to this attack felled the army like wheat before a scythe and those few who looked up saw Fremis dangling by one leg from the creature's fist, saw the giant jaws gape, saw Fremis's head bitten off and heard the crunch of the skull like a piñon shell between huge, black teeth.

The monster threw its head back and held the man above its open mouth, the enormous hand squeezing the body as blood gushed from the severed neck into that cavernous maw. The giant gulped and swallowed. The desiccated body was thrown aside. It was done before the fallen men had even struggled to their feet, and Fremis's fate fell on ten others of the strengtheners too swiftly for any reaction except that of some few men who had chosen to sleep at the very edges of the forest and who now lost themselves in its shadows and crept away.

Energized by these draughts, the monster reared itself almost upright, yammering into a chorus of echoes:

“Go west from here, down the mountain, go west. We go to kill the Council of Guardians!”

The bishop whispered to the general, next to him, “We're fighting against the Guardians? I thought that was another name for the Rebel Angels?”

The monster seemed to have preternaturally acute hearing, for it screamed, “I am Rebel Angel! I am one who saved you! My kind, we saved you, you follow us now!”

And with that, it fell to its knuckles and selected another victim. The next man decapitated, instead of being drained into the monster's mouth was swung at the end of a huge and
hairy arm like a whirling censer, filling the air with red rain. So with the next dozen slaughtered, until all who stood in Ogre's Gap were soaked with blood. As the men were reddened they began to grow, taller and wider and more horrid with each moment, teeth lengthening into fangs, armor becoming living bone and shell, skulls becoming scaled casques that gleamed with an ashen pallor. The beast bawled again. All still capable of hearing anything, heard the words, “Behold the Quellers!”

The crimsoned drummers began to beat, the sanguined trumpeters to blast, the general—scarlet from plumed helm to boot-toe—rode a horned and carmine dappled beast that no longer resembled a horse. The commander rode, teeth showing in a ferocious grin. The bishop rode, forgetting all about his coup. The officers rode. The men marched. The ogre bawled again, and this time the message was, “Westward. Move westward!”

The army began to move. From the woods, the rebels watched, aghast. They were not believers in magic. They could not have imagined the enormity that went against all nature, the warlock's horrid horde. Fortunately for them, the army had no eyes for them, nor did the monster who had called the army into being, for that creature was busy with the remaining strengtheners, assuring that no one of them should be left unmutilated though well over half the original number would be left alive.

When the army had gone so far down the mountain that the drums could no longer be heard; when the monster had ravaged the last of the strengtheners and had shambled off in the same direction, only then the demons crept from the forest to move among the bodies. One of them stood silent at the edge of the clearing, sections of his horns becoming transparent as the Dantisfan upon his head transmitted what he saw to others of his kind west and south and east of him.

Far from where he stood, two days journey at least, a dobsi spoke, and to the demon's mind, his Dantisfan interpreted. “Person, maybe human, label Dezmai cries loudly:
They must not be left alive. From their pain the monster
takes its life. None living may be left alive! From their pain the monster takes his power!”

The demon spoke to other demons, and they to a troop of rebels who had just emerged through the wood. Neither demons nor rebels were armed, but there were arms enough upon the field. Swords sharpened for battle served to behead those who had been left alive. Captain Trublood was among them, and his last thought was that he need no longer worry about the bishop's daughter. Axes meant for war were keen enough to chop the trees needed for a great pyre. The smoke of that burning rose throughout the night and into the following day. When it was done, all that was left on the high field was ashes, armor, and charred bone.

As the pyre burned at Ogre's Gap, the rebels sent riders to warn the people that the horror lived on blood and pain, that the only way to conquer it was to deprive it of blood and pain. “Do not fight,” the riders cried. “Do not defend. Give up bravery or honor, for they are meaningless. Only run, hide, deprive the horde of the agony that keeps it alive.”

 

Elnith said the Guardians had to go west, at once, and quickly. At the cavern of the seeress, while some people slept and others tried to convince themselves they should stay in Omega Site, those with the sign readied themselves for the long march that Elnith told them they must begin at dawn. Bertral, with his eyes shut, sat on the wagon tongue with his book, calling the role of the Guardians and Elnith moved restlessly about him, searching silently for the beings he named. Intent upon this distant communication, she did not see the shadow that detached itself from the cavern entrance and came to the side of the road.

“Nell,” he said.

Elnith stopped. She did not know the man before her, but Nell did, and Nell had come awake at the sound of his voice. Elnith retreated, not far, waiting to see what was happening to her link with this present day.

“Alan?” Nell asked. “Oh, God, Alan.”

He stepped forward and hugged her, the two of them clinging together in the darkness.

“They said you didn't talk.”

“Elnith doesn't,” she replied. “But she's an intermittent inhabitant.”

“It's not you, then, who's changed. It's someone else.”

“Oh, it's not me, Alan. No. But it isn't anyone…foreign, either. I mean, she fits into me like a hand into a glove. It's not uncomfortable. I could resent being a glove, of course, but the things I catch sight of when the hand inside me moves! The things she knows! We used to argue all the time, at the observatory, Neils and me, and now…if he were here…I could tell him where to find how it works, how it all works.”

“She picked someone in her field, then.” He smiled tenderly at her, smoothing her hair back from her face, searching the sign on her forehead as though to memorize it.

“Maybe that's it. I know her language, at least a little.”

“Her language is silence?”

“It's just…words are so imprecise. They have different meanings to different people. She…she speaks in certainties. Directly, mind to mind.”

“Do all of them do that?”

She shook her head. “No. I don't think so. Dismé doesn't mention it…Dismé. Did you know she has my book?”

He smiled. “I passed it along to a Latimer descendent a few centuries back. By that time, the written language was beginning to deviate quite a bit, and I thought if I waited any longer, no one would be able to read it. The last bit, the bit you taped, I transcribed that into the book as well, so it was your complete account of the Happening. There's a copy in your stasis locker, just in case you want to review.”

“I don't need to review. I remember it far too well. The Darkness, when even the pings couldn't see. The endless numbers of the dead. The monsters. I thought that was over, and here it is again!”

“When you make this journey, may I go with you? Will Elnith mind if I go with you?”

Nell was silent, as though waiting for a signal or a comment, but none came. “It may not be possible. In any case, you have no reason for going except me.”

“Isn't that enough?”

“Not in this battle, Alan. I don't know what's happening, but I know it's more important than we are as people.”

He inspected her face, looking at each part of it as though searching for something.

“I've grown old,” she said.

“I've been looking at you in your coffin every time I've waked. You don't look any different to me. Does she have a personality, this…inhabitant of yours?”

Nell considered this, the emptiness of her face showing her thoughts. “No,” she whispered. “She doesn't. She has no…agenda at all. No…hope, fear, anything. Just this pure intelligence, loaded with curiosity, picking up every detail of everything she comes upon. Almost without self-awareness…”