A Heritage of Stars (6 page)

Finally he reached the ridgetop, and there, below him, in a bowl-like valley, he saw the ring of fires and the dancing, yelling figures. In the center of the circle of fires stood a gleaming pyramid that caught and reflected the light of the leaping flames.

A pyramid of skulls, he thought—a pyramid of polished human skulls—but even as he thought it, he remembered something else and knew that he was wrong. He was looking at, he knew, not human skulls but the skulls of long-dead robots, the shining, polished brain cases of robots whose bodies had gone to rust centuries before.

Wilson had written of such pyramids, he recalled, and had speculated on the mysticism or the symbolism that might be behind the collection and display of them.

He hunkered close against the ground and felt a shiver growing in him, a shiver that reached forward across the old, gone centuries to fasten icy fingers on him. He paid little attention to the leaping, shouting figures, his attention fastened on the pyramid. It had about it a barbaric aura that left him cold and weak and he began inching back, carefully down the hill, moving as cautiously as he had before, but now driven by a gripping fear.

Near the foot of the hill he rose and headed south and west, still moving warily, but in a hurry now. Behind him the drumming and the shouting faded until it was no more than a murmur in the distance. But he still drove himself.

The first paleness of dawn was in the eastern sky when he found a place to hole up for the day. It was what appeared to be an old estate, set above a lake and situated on a piece of ground enclosed by a still-standing metal fence. Glancing eastward across the lake, he tried to pinpoint the spot where the tribe had held its dance, but except for a thin trickle of smoke, he could make out nothing. The house was a stone and brick structure and so thoroughly masked by trees that he did not see it until he had made his way through a broken place in the fence and was almost upon it. Chimneys sprouted from both ends of it and a sagging portico, half collapsed, ran along its front. Behind it stood several small brick buildings, half obscured by trees. Grass grew tall and here and there beds of perennials, some of them in bloom, had persisted through the ages since the last people had occupied the house.

He scouted the area in the early dawn. There was no evidence that anyone had visited the place in recent days. There were no paths, no trails, broken through the grass. Centuries before, the place must have been looted, and now there would be no reason for anyone to come back here.

He did not approach the house, contented to view it from the shelter of the trees. Satisfied that it was deserted, he sought a place where he could hide himself, finding it in a thick cluster of lilac trees that had spread over a comparatively wide area. On hands and knees he wormed his way deep into the thicket until he came to a spot near the center where there was room enough to lie down.

He rose to a sitting position, propping his back against a thick tangle of lilac trunks. He was engulfed in the greenery of the clump. It would be impossible for anyone passing by to know that he was there. He unshipped the quiver and laid it, with the bow, alongside him, then slipped off the backpack and untied the thongs that closed it. From it he took a slab of jerked meat and with his knife belt cut off a piece of it. It was tough to chew and had little flavor, but it was good food for the trail. It was light of weight, would not spoil, and was life sustaining—good solid beef, dried until there was little moisture left. He sat and munched it, feeling the tension draining out of him, draining, it seemed, into the ground on which he sat, leaving him tired and relaxed. Here, he thought, was momentary peace and refuge against the day. The worst was over now. He had crossed the city and was now in its western reaches.

He had faced the dangers of the city and had come through unscathed. Although, in thinking this, he realized, he was deluding himself. There had never been any actual danger, no threat directed at him. The set trap had been an accident. The intended game, most likely, had been a bear or deer and he had simply blundered into it. It had posed a danger born of his own carelessness. In a hostile, or even unknown, land a man did not travel trails. He stayed well off them, at worst paralleling them and keeping eyes and ears well open. Three years of woods-running had taught him this and he should have remembered it. He warned himself that he must not forget again. The years at the university had lulled him into a false security, had changed his way of thinking. If he was going to get through this foray into the west, he must revert to his old way of caution.

Sneaking up to take a look at the dance or celebration or whatever it might have been had been a piece of pure foolhardiness. He had told himself that he must see what was taking place, but in this he had only fooled himself; what he actually had done had been to act impulsively, and one man traveling alone must never act on impulse. And what had he found? Simply that for some unknown reason a tribe, or a combination of tribes, was holding some sort of festivity. That and the confirmation of what Wilson had written about the pyramiding of robotic brain cases.

Thinking about the brain cases, an involuntary shudder of apprehension ran through him. Even here, in the early morning light, safely hidden in a lilac clump, the memory of the brain cases could still trigger a strange residual and unreasoning fear. Why should this be so? he wondered. What about the brain cases could arouse such an emotion in a man?

A few birds were singing their morning songs. The slight breeze that had blown in the night had died with dawn and not a leaf was stirring. He finished with the jerky and put it back in the pack. He hitched himself away from the cluster of tree trunks against which he had been leaning and stretched out to sleep.

7

She was waiting for him when he crawled out of the lilac thicket in the middle of the afternoon. She stood directly in front of the tunnel he had made to force his way into the thicket, and the first indication he had that anyone was there came when he saw two bare feet planted in the grass at the tunnel's end. They were dirty feet, streaked with flaking mud, and the toenails were untrimmed and broken. He froze at the sight of them and his eyes traveled up the tattered, tarnished, grease-stained robe that reached down to her ankles. The robe ended and he saw her face—a face half hidden in a tangled mop of iron-gray hair. Beneath the mop of hair were a pair of steely eyes, now lighted with hidden laughter, the crow's-feet at the corners of them crinkled in merriment. The mouth was a thin slash and twisted, the lips close-pressed, as if trying to hold in a shout of glee. He stared up at her foolishly, his neck craned at a painful angle.

Seeing that he'd seen her, she cackled at him and did a shuffling jig.

“Aye, laddie, now I have you,” she shouted. “I have you where I want you, crawling on your belly and kissing my feet. I had you spotted all the day and I've been waiting for you, being very careful not to disturb your beauty rest. It is shameful, it is, and you with the mark upon you.”

His eyes flashed to each side of her, sick with apprehension, shamed at being trapped by an odious old hag who shouted gibberish at him. But she was alone, he saw; there was no one else about.

“Well, come on out,” she told him. “Stand up and let us have a look at the magnificence of you. It's not often that Old Meg catches one like you.”

He tossed the bow and quiver and the packsack out beyond the tunnel's mouth and got to his feet, confronting her.

“Now look at him,” she chortled. “Is he not a handsome specimen? Shining in his buckskins with egg upon his face, account of being caught at his little tricks. And sure you thought no one was a-seeing you when you came sneaking in at dawn. Although I am not claiming that I saw you; I just felt you, that was all. Like I feel the rest of them when they come sneaking in. Although, truth to tell, you did better than the rest. You looked things over well before you went so cleverly to earth. But even then I knew the mark upon you.”

“Shut up the clatter,” he told her roughly. “What is this mark you speak of, and you say you felt me? Do you mean you sensed me?”

“Oh, but he's a clever one,” she said. “And so well spoken, too, with a fine feeling for the proper words. ‘Sensed me,' he says, and I suppose that is a better word. Until now I did not clap eyes upon you, but I knew that you were there and I knew where you went and kept track of you, sleeping there, all the livelong day. Aye, you cannot fool the old girl, no matter what you do.”

“The mark?” he asked. “What kind of mark? I haven't any marks.”

“Why, the mark of greatness, dearie. What other could it be, a fine strapping lad like you, out on a great adventure.”

Angrily, he reached down to pick up his knapsack, slung it on his shoulder.

“If you've made all the fun you want of me,” he said, “I'll be on my way.”

She laid a hand upon his arm. “Not so fast, my bucko. It is Meg, the hilltop witch, that you are talking with. There are ways that I can help you, if I have a mind to, and I think I have a mind to, for you're a charming lad and one with a good heart in him. I sense that you need help and I hope you're not too proud to ask it. Although among the young there's always a certain arrogance of pride. My powers may be small and there are times they are so small I wonder if in truth I really am a witch, although many people seem to think so and that's as good as being one. And since they think I am, I set high fees on my work, for if I set a small fee, they'd think me a puny witch. But for you, my lad, there'll be no fee at all, for you are poorer than a church mouse and could not pay in any case.”

“That's kind of you,” said Cushing. “Especially since I made no solicitation of your help.”

“Now listen to the pride and arrogance of him,” said Meg. “He asks himself what an old bag like myself could ever do for him. Not an old bag, sonny, but one that's middle-aged. Not as good as I once was, but not exactly feeble, either. If you should want no more than a tumble in the hay, I still could acquit myself. And there's something to be said for a young one to learn the art from someone who is older and experienced. But that, I see, is not what you had in mind.”

“Not exactly,” Cushing said.

“Well, then, perhaps you'd like something better than trail fare to stuff your gut. The kettle's on and you'd be doing Meg a favor to sit at table with her. If you are bound to go, it might help the journey to start with a belly that is full. And I still read that greatness in you. I would like to know more about the greatness.”

“There's no greatness in me,” he protested. “I'm nothing but a woods runner.”

“I still think it's greatness,” Meg told him. “Or a push to greatness. I know it. I sensed it immediately this morning. Something in your skull. A great excitement welling in you.”

“Look,” he said, desperately, “I'm a woods runner, that is all. And now, if you don't mind.”

She tightened her grip upon his arm. “Now, you can't go running off. Ever since I sensed you.…”

“I don't understand,” he said, “about this sensing of me. You mean you smelled me out. Read my mind, perhaps. People don't read minds. But, wait, perhaps they can. There was something that I read—”

“Laddie, you can read?”

“Yes, of course I can.”

“Then it must be the university you are from. For there be precious few outside its walls who can scan a line. What happened, my poor precious? Did they throw you out?”

“No,” he said, tightly, “they did not throw me out.”

“Then, sonny, there must be more to it than I ever dreamed. Although I should have known. There was the great excitement in you. University people do not go plunging out into the world unless there are great events at stake. They huddle in their safety and are scared of shadows.…”

“I was a woods runner,” he said, “before I went to the university. I spent five years there and now I run the woods again. I tired of potato hoeing.”

“And now,” she said, “the bravado of him! He swaps the hoe for a bow and marches toward the west to defy the oncoming horde. Or is this thing you seek so great that you can ignore the sweep of conquerors?”

“The thing I seek,” he said, “may be no more than a legend, empty talk whispered down the years. But what is this you say about the coming of a horde?”

“You would not know, of course. Across the river, in the university, you squat behind your walls, mumbling of the past, and take no notice of what is going on outside.”

“Back in the university,” he said, “we knew that there was talk of conquest, perhaps afoot already.”

“More than afoot,” she said. “Sweeping toward us and growing as it moves. Pointed at this city. Otherwise, why the drumming of last night?”

“The thought crossed my mind,” he said. “I could not be sure, of course.”

“I've been on the watch for them,” said Meg. “Knowing that at the first sign of them I must be on my way. For if they should find Old Meg, they'd hang her in a tree to die. Or burn her. Or visit other great indignity and pain upon this feeble body. They have no love of witches, and my name, despite my feeble powers, is not unknown to them.”

“There are the people of the city,” Cushing said. “They've been your customers. Through the years you've served them well. You need only go to them. They'll offer you protection.”

She spat upon the ground. “The innocence of you,” she said, “is terrible to behold. They'd slip a knife between my ribs. They have no love of me. They hate me. When their fears become too great, or their greed too great, or something else too great for them to bear, they come to me, yammering for help. But they come only when there's nowhere else to go, for they seem to think there's something dirty about dealing with a witch. They fear me and because of this fear, they hate me. They hate me even when they come to me for help.”