"We must eat only the seeds of the pure white fungus--that's the least
dangerous. We must walk and walk to keep our bodies so tired and hungry
that they use it all. We must keep to a straight line."
"We'll live," he said. "Outside among our people, with our minds
whole. We'll alternate left and right each time we round a tree, to
hold our straight line. We'll come out somewhere."
"I will follow. May Morwenna go with us."
The fantastic journey wound over great gnarled roots and buttresses
fusing and intermingling until it seemed that the root-complex was
one unthinkably vast organism with many trunks soaring half-seen into
endless darkness. Time had no feeling there. Space was a bubble of
ghostly light a man could leap across.
Could leap and did, over and over, the woman following. The man climbed
a curiously regular, whitish root higher than his head and it writhed.
Then, swaying back along its length, came a great serpent head with
luminous ovoid eyes. While the man crouched in horror, waving the woman
back, the monstrous jaws gaped and the teeth were blunt choppers and
grinders, weirdly human looking. They bit hugely into a bracket fungus
and worried at it. Man and woman hurried on.
Strength waned. The woman fell behind. The man turned back to her and
the light was failing. The blue mold was black, the luminous panels
more ghostly.
"It's night. Shall we sleep?" he asked.
"It's just come day," the woman said, pointing upward.
He looked up. Far above, where had been gloom, hung a pinkish-green,
opalescent haze of light. Parallel lines of tree trunks converged
through it to be lost in nebulosity.
"Daylight overpowers the luminous fungi," she said.
"We sleep, then walk again. Shall we find food?"
"No. We must always go to sleep hungry so we will wake again."
They looked, until tired out, for a place of shelter.
They slept, locked together in the cranny of a massive buttress. The
man dreamed of his tame home-world.
* * * * *
He woke again into nightmare. In a twenty-foot fan-grove of the white
fungus they combed handfuls of black spores out of gill slots. The
birdshot-sized spores had a pleasant, nutty flavor.
With the strength more walking. _Use it, use it, burn the poison._ Day
faded above, and luminous night below came back to light the way. A
rocky ledge and another, and then a shallow ravine with a black stream
cascading. They drank and the man said, "We'll follow it, find an
upland clearing."
They heard rapid motion and crouched unbreathing while a stomper minced
by up ahead. It had a white crest.
On and on, fatigue the whip for greater fatigue and salvation at the
end of endurance. They passed wild humans. A statuesque woman with dull
eyes and yellow hair to her ankles, placidly feeding. Babies big as
four-year-old normals, by themselves, grazing on finger-shaped fungi.
An enormous human, fourteen feet tall, fat-enfolded, too ponderous to
stand even in low gravity, crawling through fungus beds. The man could
not tell its sex.
On and on, sleep and eat and travel and sleep, darkness above or
darkness below, outside of time. The stream lost, found again,
sourcing out finally under a great rock. And there, lodged in a black
sandbank, the man found a human thigh bone half his own height. He
scoured off the water mold with sand. He was armed.
The man walked ahead clutching his thigh bone, and the woman followed.
They slept clasped together naked all three, man, woman and thigh bone.
Stompers passed them and they crouched in sham feeding. The man prayed
without words, _both or neither_. And hatred grew in him.
Snakes and giant slugs and the beautiful, gigantic, mindless wild
humans, again and again, a familiar part of nightmare. The fat and
truly enormous humans; and the man learned they had been male once. He
remembered from far away where time was linear the voice of Grandfather
Man: _Some are beyond saving, and those they kill._
And a stomper passed, white crested, and far ahead a human voice cried
out in wordless pain and protest. The man was minded to deviate from
his line for fear of what they might see, but he did not. When they
came on the boy, larger than the man but beardless and without formed
muscles, the man looked at the tears dropping from the dull eyes
and the blood dropping from the mutilation and killed him with the
thigh bone. _Some are beyond saving._ And the hatred in him flamed to
whiteness.
On and on, day above and day below in recurrent clash of lights. A
white crested stomper paused and looked at them, crouched apart and
trembling. The man felt the deepest, most anguished fear of all and
beneath it, hatred surged until his teeth ached.
On and on. The man's stubble softened into beard, his hair touched his
ears. On and on.
The land sloped upward and became rocky. The trees became smaller and
wider spaced so that whole trunks were visible and the light of upper
day descended. A patch of blue sky, then more as they ran shouting with
gladness, and a bare mountain crest reared in the distance.
They embraced in wild joy and the woman cried, "Thank you, oh
_loveliest_ Morwenna!"
"Pia, we're human again," Cole said. "We're back in the world. And I
love you."
* * * * *
Fearful of stompers, they moved rapidly away from the forest over
steadily rising ground. The growth became more sparse, the ground more
rocky, and near evening they crossed a wide moorland covered with
coarse grass and scattered blocks of stone. Ahead a long, low fault
scarp bounded it and there they found a cave tunneled into the rock,
too narrow for a stomper. At last they felt safe. Morwenna rode silvery
above the distant forest.
Water trickled from the cave which widened into a squared-off chamber
in which the water spilled over the rim of a basin that looked cut with
hands. Underfoot were small stone cylinders of various lengths and as
his eyes adjusted Cole saw that they were drill cores.
"Prospectors made this," he told Pia, "in the old, innocent days
when they still hoped to find heavy metals." Then he saw the graven
initials, T.C.B., and the date, 157 A.S.
They ate red berries growing in their dooryard, gathered grass for a
bed and slept in a great weariness.
Next day and the next they ate red berries and fleshy, purple ground
fruits and slept, gaining strength. Secure in their cave mouth they
watched stompers cross the moorland. When night fell they gazed at the
bunched moons, but the three Maidens did not quite form a house and
Hoggy Darn was still pursuing them.
"A few days," Pia said.
"If this isn't Emrys Upland, Arscoate will kill us with fire mist."
She nodded.
More stompers crossed the moorland, some white crested. They moved
there randomly at night and from the forest came a far-off sound of
stompers singing. The Maidens formed a house and Hoggy Darn grazed the
side of it before they fled. To south and west faint rose glowed in the
night sky.
"Fire mist," Pia said. "The nights of harrying have begun. Oh Flinter,
if this is really Emrys Upland it will be perfect."
"What will?"
"You--us--oh, I can't say yet."
"Secrets, Pia? Still secrets? Between _us_?"
"You'll know soon, Flinter. I mustn't spoil it."
The love in her eyes was tinged with a strangeness. She sought his arms
and hid her face in his shoulder.
Stompers on the moorland all day so they dared not leave the cave.
Flyers streaking high overhead, scouting.
"Pia, I believe this _is_ Emrys Upland. I'll help after all with the
great killing."
"You will help, Flinter."
"Afterward I'll take you to Belconti."
"We will never see Belconti, Flinter."
The strangeness in her eyes troubled him. He could not kiss it away.
Stompers crowding the moorland all night with their dancing, their
vast singing coming to the cave from all round the compass. Rose banks
distant in the night sky and Hoggy Darn crossing the House of the
Maidens. Red Hoggy Darn, still lagging, still not catching it perfectly
upright. The strangeness of Pia. The waiting, clutching a polished
thigh bone.
* * * * *
At last the night when the mighty war song of the stompers went up
unbearably, as the man had heard it that once before, and fire mist
boiled along the distant mountains. Flyers shuttled across the sky,
dropped, rose again. Blasters ripped the night with ion-pencils. Hoggy
Darn gleamed redly on the threshold of the House of the Maidens that
stood almost upright and perfect with silvery Morwenna at the vertex.
Flyers blasted clearings in the throng of stompers, and grounded. Men
boiled out of them, setting up Corbin powercasters here, there, another
place, fighting as soon as their feet hit ground.
The man stood up and brandished the thigh bone.
"I must go down and fight. Wait here."
"I must go too," the girl said calmly.
"Yes, you must," he agreed. "Come along."
Stompers rushed by them and bounded over their heads and did not harm
them. Blaster-torn stompers fell heavily beside them, threshing and
snapping, and they were not touched. Men lowered weapons to point at
the man and girl, shouting to one another out of mazed faces silently
in the whelming music of the stomper chorus. Man and girl walked on.
Unharmed through the forest of singing, leaping shapes, hand in hand
through a screen of fighting men that parted to admit them, they walked
into the light of a glowing Corbin where a tall, gaunt old man stood
watching their approach. The feeling of exalted unreality began to lift
from Cole.
"Grandfather, give us blasters," he shouted. "We want to fight."
"The power is on you, lad, and you only half know it," the old man
shouted back. "Stand here by the Corbin. Your fight is not yet." Tears
stood in the fierce old eyes.
Across the moorland the fighting raged. Islands of men and women
grouped round their Corbins held back the booming, chaotic sea of
stompers that surged against them from all sides. Dikes of dead and
dying grew up, men and stompers mingled. The flyers shuttled down and
up again and more islands of men took shape. Hoggy Darn crossed the
threshold and the savage war song of the stompers shook the night sky.
In a lull Morgan came in to the Corbin to change the wave track on his
blaster. His face was a mask of iron joy and his eyes blazed.
"Morgan, if we are both alive after, I will kill you!" Cole shouted.
"No," Morgan rumbled. "You have been into the forest and come out
again. It took you three weeks. It took me three hundred years. Clasp
hands, my brother in hatred."
"Yes, brother in hatred." The exalted unreality began coming back
strongly. "I want a blaster!" he howled at Morgan.
"No, brother in hatred, your fight is not yet." Morgan rejoined the
battle, the ring of men standing braced in blaster harness fifty yards
away, ripping down with interweaving ion-pencils the great forms
leaping inward. Man and girl held hands and watched.
To the left trouble came to a nearby island. Stompers converged from
all sides, abandoning the other attacks, impossibly many. They overran
the defenders, attacking not them but the powercaster behind them,
and piled up until the Corbin's blue-violet glare was hidden. A great
blossoming of flame tore the pile of stompers apart, but the Corbin was
dark.
"They blew out the power banks," Pia said. "They've never known to do
that before. Now the men still living have only pack charges."
It was a new tactic, a death-hour flash of insight for Grandfather
Stomper. Across the moor, island after island went dark and the war
song grew in savage exultation, but the man thought it dwindled in
total volume. Then it was their own turn.
Cole and Pia crouched away from the Corbin in the lee of a stone block
and two still-twitching stompers. Beside them Morgan and Bidgrass fired
steadily at the shapes hurtling above. When the Corbin blew, a wave
of stinking heat rolled over them. All around, survivors struggled to
their feet, using flame pistols to head-shoot wounded stompers, digging
out and connecting emergency pack charges to their blasters. They were
pitifully few and their new, dark island was thirty feet across.
The moor seemed dark with only the red of flame pistols and the violet
flickering of power pack blasters. It seemed to heave randomly like a
sluggish sea with the seen struggles of dying stompers and the felt
struggles of lesser human bodies. Thinned now, stompers attacked singly
or in small groups. Blasters flickered and ripped and went darkly
silent as power packs discharged. The red of short-range flame pistols
replaced them. But across the fault scarp ridge the tumult swelled to
new heights and Corbin after Corbin there flamed out of existence in a
bloom of rose-purple against the skyline.
In a lull Bidgrass shouted to Morgan, "That's costing them more than
they have to give, over there. Listen. Can you hear it?"
"Yes, Father in Hatred," Morgan said. "They will break soon."
"Yes, when Arscoate lays the fire mist. They will come through here. I
have one charge left."
"I have two, Father in Hatred. Change packs with me."
Cole found his voice and his senses once more.
"I must find a weapon! Grandfather, give me your flame pistol!"
"Soon, lad. Soon now. Let the power take you," the old man soothed.
Stompers streamed over the moor again and the fighting flared up. The
war song beat against the man's ears so that he drew the girl nearer
and shook the thigh bone. Blaster fire flickered out altogether and
the red blooming of flame pistols weakened. But more and more stompers
streamed past without attacking. Then the man saw fire mist plume
lazily in the east, point after point coalescing all along the forest
edge.
"Now!" shouted a great voice beside him. "Now, lad!"
It was old Bidgrass, striding out like a giant, blaster leveled in its
carrying harness.
The shout released Cole and he saw it far off, coming down the scrap
rubble to the moor. Huger than any, white crest thirty feet above the
ground, Grandfather Stomper. The war song roared insanely over the
moor. Hoggy Darn gleamed heart-midst of the three lady moons.
The grim old man aimed and fired. The great bird-shape staggered and
came on, left wing trailing. The old man waited until it was nearly on
top of him and fired again. The stomper jerked its head and the bolt
shattered the great tripart beak but did not kill it. With the right
mitten-wing it reached down and swung its adversary twenty feet up,
held him and haggled at him with its stumps of beak.
The old man's free right arm flailed wildly. Cole beat the stomper's
leg with the thigh bone and howled in hatred. Then he saw the flame
pistol lying where it had fallen from the holster. He picked it up, but
the power was on him again and he did not use it. He hurled the thigh
bone at the stomper's head, diverting it for a second, and tossed the
pistol to old Bidgrass. He knew they could not fail.
The old man caught the pistol. When the great head swung back he held
the muzzle against the tri-corn eye and fired. Red plasma-jet burned
into the brain behind it. The stomper bounded once in the air, dropped
its slayer, ran three steps and collapsed.
The stomper song changed suddenly. It became a mournful lament, a dying
into grieving subsonics. Cole knew that note. He had heard it from the
stompers in the stone-floored pen when the butchers were hacking off
their heads. He knew that Grandfather Stomper was dead forever, after
seven hundred years of war.
Flyers crossed above, blasters were still at work across the ridge,
but the war was ended. The power, whatever that sense of exalted
unreality might be, left Cole; and he felt naked and ridiculous and
wondered what he was doing there. Then he saw the girl bending above
Garth Bidgrass and regained control of himself.
The strong old man was smiling wearily.
"We've won the war, lad," he said. "The next task is yours."
"I'll help you," Cole said.
"You'll lead. Oh, I'll live, but not for long. Centuries ago, lad,
there was a prophecy, and until tonight people like myself and Arscoate
thought it was only poetry, however literally Morgan and the other
ex-wilds took it."
"What was it?"
"It foretells that on the night Grandfather Stomper shall die the new
Grandfather Man will come naked out of the forest with his beautiful
wife and armed with a thigh bone, and that he will lead us in the even
greater task of reclamation that comes after. _Your_ ritual title of
address is 'Father in Love,' lad, and I'm just a broken old man now.
Take up the burden."
Cole's throat swelled, choking speech for a moment.
"I can start," he said.