Back in legendary times there had been a name for those who devoured corpses from a graveyard.
Ghouls.
And it was a matter of historical record that people had done such things, not only during a famine. Corson wondered if the overlords of war might not be cannibals rather than necrophiles. On occasion Mongol conquerors used to dish up the most beautiful of their concubines, with their heads displayed on a golden platter, so that all might see they were not miserly. What one man could think of doing, another might do again.
The door lifted to reveal the green plain, the grass spread out like a bitter carpet, crossed by the straight blue road, and the indistinct shape of the pegasone, contentedly grazing. Corson envied the beast.
Then he spotted something lying on the road, not far away. A bag. Laid on top of it, a metal plate glinted in the milky light which filtered through the clouds. In three steps he reached it. He looked it over closely, without touching it. While they were shut inside the building someone had left these here, intending them to be seen.
The plate bore a message.
For one moment the letters danced before his eyes, and he read:
CORSON, THIS BAG CONTAINS VICTUALS. EVEN EMPTY WRAPPINGS CAN STILL BE USEFUL. THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO MAKE WAR. REMEMBER THAT. YOU MUST GO TO AERGISTAL. IT IS THERE THAT CRIMES ARE JUDGED AND SOMETIMES PARDONED. SHOUT AERGISTAL. THE PEGASONE WILL UNDERSTAND.
Someone was playing a game with them. Escaping, being stranded here—now the bag and the message. If the unknown meddler was an ally, why did he not show himself? And if he was an enemy, why hadn’t he killed them?
He weighed the bag in his hand, then opened it. Inside were a score of combat rations. Mechanically he slung it over his shoulder and reentered the mausoleum.
Antonella was standing there with her arms slack at her sides, her cheeks hollow, her eyes dark-ringed, plainly in a state of shock. But she seemed to have recovered from her bout of misery. The tears had dried on her face.
“We won’t die of starvation,” Corson said, handing her the bag. “Someone has thrown us a bit of birdseed.”
Before helping himself, he watched her open one of the ration packs. Apparently she was in normal control of herself again. She tore a water capsule at the proper place, the way he had shown her, and offered it to him. He shook his head, and when she tried to insist pointed out that there were plenty more.
Finally she consented to drink, and he watched her swallow, seeing how greedily her Adam’s apple rose and fell under her delicate skin. Then, sitting on the floor, he too began to eat, drinking in sips and chewing carefully. He pondered as he did so.
According to the message, I have to go to Aergistal—where “crimes are judged and sometimes pardoned.” Could I be released, at Aergistal, from the doom hanging over me?
On the other hand, it had been or would become a battlefield. Not the sort of place he wanted to take Antonella to. But he couldn’t abandon her here. And he did not know in this new universe any safe place where he could leave her.
When they had finished, he collected up the scraps that were left over and looked for a way to dispose of them. Eventually he located a little trapdoor, raised it, and found below a black space from which rose the sound of running water. At least they would not leave a visible sign of their passage here—though his precautions would prove childish if the building were full of bugs, as it might be for all he knew.
Then he made up his mind.
“We’re going to Aergistal,” he told Antonella, showing her the message. “I don’t know what’s in store for us there. I’m not even sure if we’ll reach it.”
He expected to see alarm in her face. But she remained quite calm. It seemed that she had developed absolute trust in him, and—as he told himself sourly—that was the worst of his problems.
He kissed her lightly and led her out of the building and toward the pegasone. Having strapped her in place, he donned his own harness. He hesitated a moment, because it seemed so absurd to shout “Aergistal” as though giving an address to the computer of a city cab. He had to clear his throat. Then, in a voice that still quavered, he called it out.
“Aergistal!”
And the world around them once again became a place of crazy shapes and colors.
Chapter 17
They emerged above a broad plain tufted with smoke. The sky was pinkish and across it ran palpitating veins, so unlike anything Corson had ever seen that he shivered. On the horizon, beyond a low but sharply defined mountain range, rose three pillars of mingled fire and ash.
They were descending rapidly. Below, what looked like sparkling insects darted and whirled. Astonished, he recognized armored knights on gaily caparisoned horses. Out of tall grass they charged with lances at the ready. A movement in undergrowth… and Red Indians stood up uttering wild cries, letting fly a volley of arrows at the order of their feather-bedecked chief. Some of the horses reared up, and a melee broke out—but already the pegasone’s slanting course had carried them past.
The almost invisible beam of a blazer tore the air. The pegasone shied away from it through time and space. The mountains were in a slightly different position. The plain was barren now and sown with craters.. Dull rumblings arose from it, as solid-seeming as hills of pure sound. But the sky looked just the same.
A movement attracted Corson’s attention. A few hundred meters away a monstrous mass was shifting very slowly across country. Only its geometrical form betrayed its mechanical nature. A tank? If so, it was infinitely the largest Corson had ever seen. A crater like those stamped into the ground seemed to open right in the middle of its near side, but that was illusory, due to a reflection. Corson thought it must be heading toward a low hill nearby, which might conceal a fortress or might itself be a still vaster machine. Hanging on the pegasone’s flank, he felt dreadfully exposed. He would rather have landed and sought a hiding place in this blasted terrain.
Something black and lens-shaped, with a scythe-sharp edge, came spinning from the hill toward the tank, flying a complex curve. It struck the side of the tank as though it were the blade of a circular saw. Huge sparks flashed out. Then it blew up, causing no apparent harm to the target. A bright square patch of bare metal was the only trace of the attack. The tank rumbled onward, impregnably.
Then, without warning, the rough ground opened, giving way like a pitfall under the tank’s weight. Tilting, it spat out forward extensions that struggled for purchase on the far side of the crevasse. But in vain. It tried to go into reverse, slithered, slid inexorably toward the pit. Irises opened on its sides and vomited men, in good order, wearing camouflage netting which changed color to match that of the ground and rendered them almost invisible. They hurled grenades into the pit. Flames and black smoke burst upward. The trap subsided a little farther yet, then was immobilized. But the slope was already too steep and the surface too slippery for the tank to climb out again. Finally it skidded, teetered on the very brink of the pit, and toppled forward, jamming there almost vertically. Its engines, hitherto silent, roared desperately, and quit. A few more men abandoned it and joined the others who were taking cover. A salvo of missiles darted from the hill and wiped out everything in its vicinity, making a solid layer of flame in which men were instantly consumed. The few who did escape vanished into the rugged landscape.
The whole thing could have lasted only half a minute. The pegasone had already left the fortified hill to its left. It flew so low that it had to swoop upward to avoid one outcropping hillock after another as the earth shifted in response to vast unseen forces. At last it landed in the shelter of a crag that seemed relatively stable.