“Because it is true.” Laedo told him “Though Klystar did, for a fact, make a number of worlds. Do you know how many?”
“There is only one,” Harnasch said reprovingly.
“No, there are more.”
A small crowd of people began to follow the cart as it passed through the streets of the town. Their faces were passive but curious.
“Why is this town called Klyston?” Laedo asked.
“In honour of Klystar. It means ‘Klystar’s town’.”
“Yes, of course,” Laedo muttered. Then: “Where is Klystar now? Is there any way to reach him?”
“Whenever you perform magic, Klystar is reaching out to you. Otherwise you would be powerless. That is why it is wrong to meddle with these powers without the proper training and ceremonies, as you Swirlites do.”
It was disappointing to meet with such superstition. Obviously the people of Erspia-4 had no real knowledge of Klystar.
Though there must have been some knowledge once. At least they knew his name.
And there was technical skill here. Laedo had seen a railway train coming through Klyston, pulled by a steam-powered locomotive. If things had not gone so badly wrong for him, perhaps he could have had his transductor made.
Or could he? A comical, almost ludicrous image came into his mind. Perhaps all machine parts were made by star-capped magicians in ‘mentufactories’, special places set aside by Klystar where thought-directed inertial fields could twist metal into pre-arranged shapes.
And why not? it seemed that nothing was too crazy for the Erspia worlds.
By now they were beyond Klyston and making for a bare moor. Laedo turned to the wizard.
“Listen to me. A few miles north of here is a large metal structure. A young woman is trapped in it. You must help her.”
Harmasch did not even hear him. “Change your Swirlite heart in these your last moments. May you find peace in Klystar’s bosom.”
He dropped from the cart and began walking back to the town.
The cart stopped. Laedo was taken by the arms and helped to the ground.
A numbness of will had come over him. How did he arrive in this situation? How could he have behaved so incautiously in a new and unknown culture? The geniality and apparent harmlessness of Klyston’s people had misled him, he told himself. He had been unable to imagine that they would put him to death for what was to him no more than a mischievous discourtesy.
Dire consequences were flowing from his failure. He was about to lose his life. Worse, he had incurred bad karma. He would never now be able to carry out his bound duty, which was to deliver his cargo of cavorite. And poor Histrina would die of thirst or suffocation, locked in the lead-lined cabinet.
The method of his execution was now revealed to him. A cord with a lead weight on each end was wrapped around his neck. The guards retreated, and as they did so the lead weights rose in the air.
A quartet of magicians surrounded him, keeping a distance of about twelve feet. They were concentrating, their eyes on the lead weights. The weights moved in diametrically opposite directions, tightening the cord, which bit into him.
He was being garrotted by ‘magic’!
Choking, he fell to the ground, unable to raise his hands to stay the weights, which surged away from one another as if with a will of their own. There was a roaring in his ears. He felt his tongue being forced from his mouth.
Then suddenly, mercifully, the pressure eased. Magicians, guards and onlookers were fleeing with cries of alarm. He became aware of a chivvying call from the middle distance. “Halloo! Halloo! Halloo!”
He struggled to his knees, the strangling cord still uncomfortably tight about his neck. A troop of horsemen was rushing in at a gallop. They were a strange sight. Each rider held his steed’s reins in his left hand and twirled his right arm over his head in a flailing motion. Each whirling arm seemed to be the base of an air vortex which caught dust and debris thrown up by the horses’ hooves: a deliberately created dust devil. Furthermore the dozen or so vortices eventually joined up to form a minor whirlwind which accompanied the horesmen and trailed behind them.
These could only be ‘Swirlites’, practising their rogue magic upon the air, carrying a little piece of their whirlwind-ridden country with them as a flag or banner.
The whirlwind died as the riders reined in and jostled around Laedo. One dismounted and carefully unwrapped the ligature from around his neck. Then he drew a blade which was somewhere midway between a dagger and a broadsword, and with one deft slash severed the chain joining the handcuffs.
“Being nasty done to, oho? Not liking how you dingdong? Come swirl alongside.”
With one leap the Swirlite was astride his horse. Reaching down, he pulled Laedo up behind him.
The troop cantered off the way it had come.
Laedo now had time to examine his rescuers. They were clad in makeshift garments, rags, or simply grass skirts. They seemed full of energy, chattering continually in clipped, disjointed phrases and ejaculations—a patois or slang which Laedo suspected they made up as they went along.
Most societies had their rebels who defied convention. It seemed the mood-mapped world of Erspia-4
had catered even for that.
Laedo wasn’t much of a horseman, so he was glad when the Swirlites pulled up, dismounted and made camp. What followed was like an insane festival, a madcap round of capering, cavorting, yipping and hallooing, arms flailing over heads, air vortices bending this way and that, conjoining and separating.
The man whose horse he had shared, limbs bound about with bands, a brief cloth kilt hanging from his waist, his skin filmed with sweat from his exertions clapped an arm round Laedo and offered him a hunk of bread smeared with some foul-smelling cheese.
“You no straight, oho? No slave of Klystar’s moods, oho? Like us, be you. Carry own craziness, oho?
Bond with us to Swirl. Mad-happy.”
Politely Laedo bit into the bread. No wonder these Swirlites were feared and hated. They were heretics.
They rejected Klystar! Probably they failed to realize that their own mental outlook was not self-generated either. That, too, was dictated by Klystar’s mood generators. An idiosyncratic state of mind was better able to maintain itself when crossing into other countries, that was all. Klystar had given Swirl all the advantages of lunacy.
Did the Swirlites have their own social outcasts, who lacked the vitality for a life of ceaseless partying and erratic behaviour? Laedo would certainly have been one of those. He ate the bread, then lay himself down a short distance away to get some sleep.
When he awoke it was dark and the Swirlites had finally tired themselves out. They lay sleeping, tumbled over one another, one or two draped over their horses. Laedo stole away by starlight and headed out in the direction he gauged the projector station lay.
It was not hard to find it. He knew when he had crossed the Neutralian border. Hot thoughts of killing entered his mind. He was in murder country. He found the canyon, then climbed up to his cargo ship.
What a relief it would be if he were to kill Histrina! No more keeping an eye on her, no more remorse for all the harm and killing she had done. No more having to think of her eventual welfare. Sometimes being ethical just didn’t make any sense. He thought of what a pleasure it would be to choke the life out of her…
He forced the thoughts away and opened the cabinet. As he expected, she came at him with the strength of a madwoman, scratching, tearing and biting. Subduing her was difficult, but he did it by half-suffocating her. He dragged her into the projector station and tied her securely down to a couch, where she continued screeching her hatred once she recovered.
Wearily he spoke to the control board. “Take us to Klystar. Yet again.”