Dean Koontz
Nightmare Journey
The First Journey: The Black Glass
1
In the crisp morning, before the worst of the fog had lifted, the Pure humans came into the village, descending the narrow winding road from their fortress, which perched on the edge of the alabaster cliff. In the lead was their General, dressed in milky robes and seated on one of the soundless floating sledges that only the Pures possessed. Two guards sat before him, two behind, all of them well armed.
Yet, from a distance, it was not the General who commanded attention, but the ranks behind him. Fifty Pures walked after the craft, not of the station to warrant the expenditure of a sledge's irreplaceable power plant for their own ease. Their cloaks were not radiantly white like their General's clothes, but a chalky, color that hinted of blue. Their capes flapped about them in the perpetual wind that scoured the cliff wall, and their boots crunched on cinders and gravel. The size of this contingent was what fascinated the people of the village, for no more than a dozen Pures had ever congregated in public before. They numbered so few these days that they could not risk massing in too confined an area beyond the unbreachable fortress walls.
The procession reached the bottom of the descending trail and struck across the half-mile of open land separating it from the village, which nestled in a hollow between two arms of dense forest. It moved past the monstrous formation of bacteria jewels, whose light guided travelers by night, and each of the marchers was stained fantastically by the glittering fingers of violet and emerald that reached two hundred yards in all directions from the landmark. The Pures seemed, in the instant, like mechanically gay puppets, chameleon dancers with a certain military grace.
More than 25,000 years earlier a nation whose name was now as unknown as the name Ozamandius had engineered a lethal bacteriophage related to the botulinus family but flourishing in a crystalline form. In such a state it could not infect men. However, a second bacterium, utterly harmless in itself, was engineered to break down the crystal and release the killing botulinus in a second state that was deadly to mankind. They seeded their enemy's land with crystals, allowed them to grow, then infiltrated the catalyst to bring destruction. Because the lethal bacterium had not been given reproductive capabilities in its noncrystalline form, and because the catalyst was a shortlived, sterile organism, biological warfare could be conducted as cleanly as if a gun had been used. Plague death could be applied in doses, destroying just so many of the enemy as necessary to bring them to their knees — leaving most of them to be ruled after the occupation.
The faces of the marching Pures were shattered glass images, a thousand shades of green and blue. Their cloaks exploded with rich luminescence.
Jask watched them from the second-floor room he had taken in the village inn, his face concealed by the shadows of the thrusting eaves on the many-gabled structure, further obscured by heavy umber drapes, which he had pushed open only far enough to have a view. He monitored the progression of the Pures both with a sense of wonder at the stately picture they made and with a growing terror at the understanding that they had descended from their fortress to find him and destroy him.
His respect for his own kind was such that he knew they could not fail to find him. In hours he would be captured. Certain of this but still unable to abandon all hope, he drew further back from the window and continued to watch.
From a distance it had been the ranks behind the sledge that had been arresting, but as the party moved closer, the General was the focus that drew the eye. He was larger than most Pures, a full six feet and weighing perhaps two hundred pounds. His shoulders were broad, supporting a head at once imperial and barbaric. His eyes were set under a shelf of bone that was actually slight but nonetheless primitive in effect. His face was wide, deeply creased and tough, though his nose, delicately boned, was an anachronism that softened the brutal force of that countenance. His mouth was tight, thin-lipped; when he spoke, Jask knew, his voice was harsh and deep. The man carried an air of authority with him like expensive baggage; inside those bags was the lingering odor of death.
The procession halted outside the inn itself, almost directly below Jask's window. To choose the inn for their first stop was only common sense, for an inn was the center of the town and the source of information. Still, Jask could not shake the conviction that the General was an unnatural precog who had sensed his game.
The General and soldiers made no sound to announce their arrival. The visual spectacle alone was sufficient to draw forth a representative of the village.
The innkeeper, a creature named Belmondo, came outside, wiping his hands on his apron and watching the General with a mixture of contempt and fear. His eyes, as large around as Jask's palm, rolled independently of each other in a long, lupine skull. Belmondo's appearance was the result of previous generation gene damage caused by radiation rather than the product of the genetic engineers, for he did not follow any of the patterns most favored by patrons of the Artificial Wombs. Children of Wombs were always beautiful, despite their tainted heritage; Belmondo was simply ugly. His thin, bony hands — with three fingers and two thumbs each — pulled greasy, yellow hair away from his forehead. He licked his lips with a raspy, black tongue and said, “Yes?” His tone suggested a dislike of Pures, which was natural but dangerous in this situation.
“We are looking for a man,'' the General said. “His name is Jask. Have you heard of him?”
“No,” Belmondo lied.
“Have you seen him?”
The General was aware of what tricks could be played with words.
Belmondo considered for a moment, then said, “Perhaps it would be better if you could tell me what manner of man you seek. Is he furred or scaled? There have been a few fishy cousins in town of late. Is he one of the cyclopses? They find themselves in disfavor with everyone sooner or later — as if having one eye narrows their mental vision as well. Perhaps he is a feline man? If you could be a bit more specific, you see, I could more likely tell you of him. I know all the business of the town.”
Belmondo, Jask thought, was either foolish or brave — or possessed of a bravery generated by foolishness. He knew as well as anyone that when a Pure used the word “man"' he meant another Pure, not a creature with altered genes. A Pure refused to acknowledge that the quasi-men of mutation — whether accidental or made by design — were men at all. If Pure theology were to remain intact, such mutated specimens could be considered nothing but animals.
Though Jask, raised in the teachings of the Pure church, would normally have despised Belmondo for his impudence, he welcomed it now that the quasi-man was protecting him. The saucer-eyed Belmondo knew only that Jask had fallen into disfavor with the other Pures of his enclave; that was all the mutant needed to know to justify lying for the sake of a man who might in any other circumstances be considered an enemy.
“I'll tell you one thing,” the General said. “You may feel quite smug and superior in your cunning now — but if this Jask should go his way unhampered, we will all eventually suffer, Pure and mutated alike.”
Belmondo looked skeptical, but his curiosity had been aroused by the sudden confidential tone in the General's voice.
Upstairs, at the open window, Jask felt ill, chilled by a premonition of disaster. He had not believed that the General would divulge the reason for his flight and for their pursuit of him. The Pures were too closely knit, too snobbish ever to share their inner secrets and shames with those they thought of as a lower species. If they broke the rule of silence now, if they told Belmondo, it was only a measure of how desperately the General wanted to get his hands on Jask.