Children of the Gates (8 page)

Stroud held a council of war, to which Nick and Linda could add very little. That they had returned safely from the morning’s venture, now seemed to Nick to be better fortune than they deserved. But perhaps some good had come from it by their witnessing the capture by saucer, a warning of the trouble now hovering aloft. It was finally decided that they would wait out the day where they were, since their position here was safe. With dusk they would move again, this time through a secret exit of the house.

Hadlett suggested the advantages of resting all they could, since once they were on the move again they would have heavy demands made upon their strength. It was then that Mrs. Clapp spoke up.

“You are all goin’ to listen to me now.” She spoke with the same firmness as Stroud showed upon occasion. “The Vicar, he has the right of it when he says as how this is goin’ to be a hard pull. Me, I ain’t put by in a chair with a pap bowl under m’ chin an’ two shawls around me—not as yet. But I’m stiff in m’legs, an’ when it comes to a spot o’ runnin’, I ain’t no gal in m’ teens, as it were. This is a safe place, as we all know. Best I bide here an’ you take off where m’ old feet won’t be no hindrance to you. This is only proper sense an’ you all know it!” She glanced from one to another, her face stubbornly set.

“Maude.” The Vicar spoke gently. “This is something we decided long ago—”

“Not the same at all, it ain’t!” she interrupted him. “It weren’t no matter then o’ one o’ us havin’ to lag so badly that she was a botheration an’ handicap to put all the rest in danger. You can’t make me be that, sir, you can’t!”

“Perhaps not, Maude. But do you want to lay a worse burden on us then? To go and leave you and remember it?”

She stared now at the hands twisted together in her lap. “That’s a hard—hard thing to say—”

“Would you go, Maude? If I broke a limb and could not travel, if Lady Diana, Jean, Sam, any of us said what you have just said, would you agree?”

He paused, she made no answer. Then he continued: “From the first we said it, and we mean it—we stay together, no matter what comes—”

“It ain’t fair—sayin’ that. Me an’ Jeremiah, we’re old, an’ we’re safe here. You could come back when it’s safe again.”

“
We
shall make it, Maude.” Lady Diana moved up behind the stool on which Mrs. Clapp sat. Now her hands closed on the rounded shoulders of the older woman, and she gave her a small shake that had a rough caress in it. “We’ve been through a lot, and we’ve always made it.”

“There’s always a first time not to, m’lady. An’ I don’t want to be a burden—”

“You, Maude Clapp? What would we do without your knowledge of growing things? Remember how you pulled Barry through that fever when we had all given up? We can’t do without you!”

“And don’t forget what we owe Jeremiah.” Jean knelt beside the stool, her brown hands laid over the gnarled, arthritis-crooked fingers clasped so tightly together. “He always knows when the People are around and tells us. You and Jeremiah, we couldn’t do without either of you, and we’re not going to!”

“It ain’t right.” Mrs. Clapp held to her view stubbornly. “But, if I say you ‘no,’ you’re like to try to carry me. I wouldn’t put it past your stuffin’ me in a basket”—she smiled a little—“an’ draggin’ me along. An’ a good hefty bit of draggin’ I would make for the one who tried that, I’m tellin’ you, should you have a thought in that direction.”

“You’ll go out on your own two feet, along with all of us,” Hadlett assured her. “I foresee more skulking and hiding in our next journey than running. Is that not so, Sam?”

“You have the right words for it, Vicar. With them flyin’ devils out an’ bein’ so close to the city, an’ all. We go out through the bolt hole an’ then we take to the country like Jas Haggis used to.”

“Seein’ as how we ain’t no poachers nor night hiders like Jas,” Mrs. Clapp commented, “I don’t believe that for one minute, Sam. Me, I’m more used to a good comfortable kitchen than all this trampin’. Get back to the cave, I will, an’ then you’re goin’ to have a good hard argufyin’ on your hands do you talk about doin’ this again.”

Jean laughed. “I shall remind you of that, Maude, the next time you get down your herb bag and start talking about what you think may be waiting to be popped into it if you only have the chance to go and look.”

“You do that, m’gal.” Mrs. Clapp chuckled. “You just remind me about m’ perishin’ feet, an’ aching back, an’ all the rest of it. An’ like as not I’ll be a homebody as quick as I could scat Jeremiah—not that I am like ever to do that. Am I now, old man?” The gray cat had come to her knee and now stood on his hind legs, his forepaws braced against her, looking intently into her face as if he understood every word she said.

“So we wait and rest.” The Vicar spoke briskly. “And go at dusk.”

“Seems best,” Stroud agreed.

But if the others could rest, Nick found that the day dragged. There was more light in the room, but it was stuffy, for the small slits under the eaves that admitted the light did not do the same for much air. The door to the room with the barred window was open and he could see the sun on the dusty floor there.

They had all retired once more to their beds, and he thought some were asleep. But he was sure that the pilot, whose pile of leaves adjoined his own, was not one of them. Crocker turned restlessly. Nick believed he heard him mutter once or twice. But his words were obviously not addressed to the American and the latter dared not break the silence between them.

Rita—Crocker’s girl who had accepted what the Herald had to offer and so was no longer human. Nick would never forget seeing Linda’s hand pass through the other’s outstretched arm. Illusion, but, if so, created by one who knew Rita well. And why had an illusion been crying? Was that so he, Nick, could carry such a tale back here?

His head ached, the stuffiness of the room was unendurable. With as little noise as possible he got up, went into that other chamber and to the window guarded only by the grill, being careful not to touch the iron lattice. There was actually a breeze here and he filled his lungs gratefully with fresh air.

From this point he could not see the front lane nor the woods. That was east, this faced south.

Color—a shimmer of color at first. Then it—hardened was the only word Nick could supply for the process. Shaped, fully three dimensional, he saw brilliant details.

A man stood there, his eyes on the house, searching. Somehow Nick thought this stranger knew just where he was, even if the window’s shadow might hide him. Out of an angle of the wall paced a white animal, its legs stilt thin, pawed where they should be hooved. But this time flat on the ground, not inches above the surface.

The stiff material of the Herald’s tabard was divided by pattern into four sections, each rich with embroidery. Nick could guess where the English had gotten their name for the alien—the tabard had a strong likeness to a quartered coat of arms, a true “coat” since it was worn.

Herald and horse, interested in the house. Nick wondered if he should give the alarm. But, as he hesitated, he saw the Herald swing up on a saddle that was hardly more than a pad.

The “horse” took an upward leap, soaring as if it had spread wings. And, though Nick now pushed against the grating, he held the two in sight for only a second or two. As long as he could see them, the steed was still rising.

8

“What is it, my boy?”

Nick started. He had been so intent upon the disappearance of the Herald that he had not been aware of the Vicar’s coming up behind him.

“The Herald was out there. Then he mounted, and his horse flew over the house.” The rising of the mount that was able to climb in thin air still astounded him.

“The Horse of the Hills—” Hadlett joined Nick at the window. There was nothing to be seen out there now but part of the wall in the full sun. “Do you read Kipling, Shaw? He is not so fancied nowadays—the new thinkers hold his ‘white man’s burden’ against him. But there is a bit in one of his tales about the People of the Hills out on their steeds in a stormy night—Kipling knew the old legends, perhaps he believed in them a little, too. You need only read his
Puck of Pook’s Hill
to know how much the Old Things of England captured his imagination. Yes, the People of the Hills, and their airborne mounts. There were others before Kipling who knew—Thomas the Rhymer for one.

“In Britain they lingered, as in all the Celtic realms. You find them also in Brittany, which is akin more to Celtic Britain than to Gaulish France. There must have been dealings in the old days between our world and this one—”

“Sir”—Nick looked from the window to the old man’s hawk face framed by that silver-white hair—“is the Herald, or what he represents, as much our enemy as the saucer people?”

Hadlett was not quick to answer. Nor did his eyes meet Nick’s at that moment. Rather they looked beyond the American, out the window. When the Vicar did reply, he spoke slowly, as if he wished to be very sure of every word.

“The saucer people, as you call them, they threaten our bodies, and I do not dismiss that as a minor thing. But the Herald comes to us not in open threat, but as a tempter. If we accept his offer of alliance, or absorption, then we are truly absorbed. We become other than ourselves. There would—there could be no return to our present state. It would be an abdication of all our beliefs. Those who accept are as divorced from our state as if they were not our blood kin. It is, as I have told you, a type of death.”

“Rita—if that was Rita we met . . .” Nick had heard the warning notes in the other’s voice not to pursue this subject, but he could not let it alone, though neither could he understand what worked in him to so question. “She—she was crying. And it may have been she who saved us from the saucer.”

“Yes. She wept also when she came to us the last time and Crocker would not look at her. In her, through the change, there lingered ties. That, too, exists in the legends. Fairy men and fairy maids and the mortals they loved. But never was there any happiness at the end, but sorrow, loss and defeat.

“But you say the Herald was watching the house. Which means he is aware of you and Linda, that he will offer his bargain. Be warned of that, my boy.” Hadlett placed his hands on the window frame as he looked out.

“So fair and smiling a land. He who built here must have had untroubled years, for he was able to work these fields, sow his crops, raise this house as a bulwark against the night and that which prowls it. How long ago was that, I wonder?”

Nick was forced to accept the Vicar’s change of subject. Hadlett being what he was, the American could not push further on a topic plainly so distasteful.

“Have you seen any places such as this where people live now?”

“No. This is a land under a blight. Perhaps it is the flying hunters who have made it so. The cities seem to flourish and stand intact. But the open land is full of traps. Not all the People were ever of a friendly or neutral nature. We have our tales of ogres, giants, black witches, trolls. And there are traces here of dark malignancy seen and unseen, though not to the extent we found them in England before we were captured. This is perhaps a younger land, one in which such inhabitants have not spread far. Still we have seen ruins—towers, a castle—that are certainly not of the America you must have known. This has been a fruitful, well-populated country. Now there are only the cities and such places as this. In the open move bands of drifters—in the sky, the hunters.”

“Do the cities, or the Herald, control our coming here?” Nick had a need to know as much of the truth as Hadlett could or would tell him. He judged that the Vicar was the only one of the three men who might have tried to seek out the causes for action. Stroud was intent on a problem immediately at hand, and as yet Nick knew very little of Crocker.

“If we can accept old legends as a guide,” Hadlett replied, “the People do have a manner of control. But according to all accounts they exercise that by appearing in our world, to achieve their purpose by forms of enticement or outright physical kidnapping. While our type of transference is different. Undoubtedly the cities represent a high form of what we might call, for want of a better term, technology. Though when you look upon them you cannot rationally identify them with our civilization. They may generate forces to operate a drawing power at certain sites.”

“And if we could discover how they brought us in, we could reverse that?” Nick persisted.

Again the Vicar hesitated. “You are forgetting the time element, that your own arrival here made clear to us. We have counted seasons to reckon four years—you tell us it has been more than forty in our own world. Again there were legends of men who returned, to age and die quickly as they passed from one state of existence to another.”

Nick counted days—three—no four—since they had found themselves here. How long back there—weeks—months? He shivered because that was so hard to believe. But doggedly he returned to the subject at hand.

“But the cities are safe against the saucer hunters—”

“Yes. Twice we have witnessed an aerial attack. You yourself saw them try to bring down the Herald. There appears to be a great anger or fear working in the flyers—not only for the cities but for all that pertains to them—such as the People.”

Nick digested that. The cities were safe, the open countryside was an invitation to danger. What if they could get into a city, without accepting the Herald’s bargain? He asked that.

Hadlett smiled. “But of course that is logical, and so do not think, my boy, that that idea did not present itself to us early during our existence here. Only, it cannot be achieved. For one must enter in the company of a Herald, or else there is no way in. Around each city there is an unseen wall of force. And the price for entrance is too high. The Herald will come sooner or later, he will offer you that choice. It will then be your decision to accept it, or refuse. But at that moment you will know what one of our blood must do.”

To be told a thing is one matter, to experience it another. After another word or two the Vicar returned to the larger room. But Nick remained. This insistence on the frightening change in those who accepted the Herald’s offer continued to interest him. The English apparently agreed it should not be done. Yet all their words could not bring home to Nick what was so horrible. To him the saucer hunters were the greater menace—perhaps because he could understand them better.

Looking back now he believed that Rita had offered them no threat. He could not erase his memory of her tears. In fact every time the scene came again to the fore of his mind it was clearer. Nick could recall more and more details. And he was willing to accept the fact that Rita’s intervention had saved them from capture.

The safe cities—that could only be entered in the company of the Herald. In the company of the Herald—that repeated itself. Could one take the Herald as hostage?

But surely the English must have considered every possible angle. None of them was stupid, and the need for survival sharpens the wits, bringing to the fore all one’s native abilities. Yet he kept returning to that idea. Were the Herald’s powers such—and in this world no powers whether improbable or incredible could be dismissed as impossible—that there was no possible way of capturing the air-riding messenger, or warden, or whatever he was?

Nick knew so little, except that the cities were safe, and he had a desire to find safety.

He slept awhile in the long afternoon on the floor by the window. When he roused it was to find Jeremiah beside him, an enigmatic, unmoving statue of a cat, his tail tip folded neatly over his paws, his green eyes unblinkingly set on Nick’s face. There was something in the regard that made the young man uneasy. He had the impossible idea for a moment that the cat knew exactly what he was thinking and was superiorly amused, as one might be amused at the fumbling of a child striving to master some problem too adult for his comprehension.

Nick had always liked cats. He had had old George for twelve years. And one of the stoutest stakes in the barrier between him and Margo had been her having George “put to sleep” when Nick had been in New York a year ago. George was old, he had had to have checkups at the vet’s, he was a “nuisance.” So George went, with a surface-sweet explanation of how wrong it was to prolong life that was a burden for an old and ailing animal. But Nick knew that George could have been saved. He had never answered her, never given her the satisfaction of knowing his raw anger at that new defeat. George was gone, he could do nothing about that. But Nick could remember as he did now—in every detail.

Jeremiah growled, his ears folding down to his skull, his eyes still intent on Nick’s. And Nick’s breath hissed between his teeth, almost with the sound an angry or alarmed cat might make.

The cat—knew! Jeremiah was reading his mind! Nick was as certain of that fact as if Jeremiah had spoken aloud. But it was Nick who spoke.

“You know.” What he expected in reply, he did not know. Would Jeremiah give some sign of complete understanding? But the cat made no move, did not utter a sound. And Nick’s certainty of that exchange began to fade.

Imagination—Yet he could not altogether accept the fact that he had been wrong. One did not deny the idea of telepathy nowadays, of the paranormal talents some people possessed—the gift for psychometry, precognition, all the others. And animals were supposed to be psychic, especially cats. All the rational explanations for what he believed had just happened came to mind now. Yet they did not quite explain it—and
he
was not psychic in the least. So how could Jeremiah have read his thoughts, his memory, and reacted?

Whether Jeremiah could understand him or not, Nick went on speaking softly to the big gray cat.

“George didn’t look like you. He was long-legged, and no matter how much he ate, and George was an eater all right”—Nick smiled at the memory of George enjoying a plate of turkey—“he never fattened up any. You’d have thought we kept him on short rations. He was a hunter, too. And liked to sleep on beds, but he didn’t want you to turn over and disturb him, he could make that plain.”

Jeremiah still watched him. Then the big cat yawned, stood up and walked away, his boredom plain in every movement. Nick felt foolish. It was obvious that Jeremiah was no longer interested in the least. His disdain of George, undoubtedly an inferior type of feline, obvious in every small flirt of his upheld tail as he went. Do not regale
him
with accounts of other cats, he seemed to be saying; there was, naturally, only
one
Jeremiah!

For the first time since his arrival in this world Nick laughed. Jeremiah could communicate all right—after his own fashion. And even if the cat had read Nick’s mind, he still had the standards and logic of his own species. Nick could question, but he must also accept what he saw and not close his mind.

Their party made the move at dusk, having eaten. Nick’s bread was long since gone, but some of the cheese and bacon were left. And the English carried small hard cakes made of ground nuts and dried berries pressed together, with strips of dried and tough meat.

The exit, Nick discovered, was via the fireplace. That was a cavern of an opening, the largest he had ever seen. At its back four great stones, fastened together, could be pulled out like a door. He tendered his flashlight and Stroud accepted it at once.

“Wait for me to beam up now,” the Warden ordered. “These steps are tricky.”

He disappeared and Nick caught sight of the beginning of a narrow stairway leading down. It was laid into the back of what must be a very thick chimney. They waited until from below a bright beam reached up. Then Lady Diana squeezed through with Jeremiah’s basket, followed by Mrs. Clapp, Jean and Linda carrying Lung. Hadlett went next, and he was hardly through the low door before Crocker nudged Nick.

“Now you. I’ll have to set the blocks back.”

It was a narrow squeeze all right. Mrs. Clapp and Stroud with their greater bulks must have found it almost painful. But it was not too long. Then Nick was in a level passage, also stone-walled, elbowed aside by Stroud who still held the light steady for the pilot.

Crocker did not come at once. They caught a couple of mutters to suggest he was having difficulty in fitting the door back into place. At last he joined them and Stroud sent the light ahead, taking the lead in a passage that kept them going singly, but was wider than the cramped staircase.

Little of the light filtered back as far as Nick. The air was dank, the walls sweated drops of moisture, and there was an ill smell. The passage appeared to be endless as they tramped along. There were no breaks in the walls, the way did not give access to any cellar, or side passage. Nick wondered how those with whom he now traveled had ever come to discover it. They called it the “bolt hole” and that seemed apt. But much hard labor had gone into its making, which suggested that those who had fashioned it had felt the need for such a hidden exit to the outer world.

After a while the stone walls changed to upright stakes set close together with earth packed behind them, a cruder piece of work. Nick glanced up overhead and saw a crisscross of similar stakes, thick beams to support weight. He trusted that time and decay had not damaged them.

Then, after what seemed a very long time, the light revealed another flight of stairs, these far less finished than those in the chimney, resembling a crude ladder. Up these Stroud climbed. In a few moments the light swung down to show the hand-and footholds for those who would follow. Nick watched Hadlett and Lady Diana assist Mrs. Clapp all they could and it was a lengthy process.