Harbinger (31 page)

“Yes I have.”

“You said you’ve wandered all over the planet. Have you wandered over to see the Harbinger?”

“Perhaps.”

I hated his poker face.

“Come on, Laird.”

“What are you asking me, Ellis?”

“I’m asking if you know how to find the Harbinger.”

“Yes, I know how.”

“Will you show me?”

“Let’s have another game, and I will think on it.”

“No. Think on it now.”

He went rigidly still. A couple of minutes passed, then several more minutes passed. Then he started setting up the board again.

“Well?” I said.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“You aren’t ready.”

“Come on. What are you talking about?”

“I believe I won the last game, so you may make the first move.”

“Fuck the game, Laird. Tell me why I’m not ready to meet the Harbinger.”

“Your mind is too fragile.”

“Wasn’t your mind too fragile to meet him?”

“No, it wasn’t an issue in my case.”

“So why should it be with me?”

“Ellis, I am not a living being anymore. My identity is not in question because in a human sense I have no identity. You’ve told me about your memory breaks, your dissociative episodes. You’ve told me about your dreams and visions and your doubts about this reality. Your mind is too fragile.”

“In your opinion—an opinion which I’ve restrained myself from requesting, by the way.”

“Yes, in my opinion.”

“Look. The Harbingers made me what I am. If there’s an answer to my life, they have it.”

“The Harbinger of the Deadlands has chosen to live apart in meditative isolation. He will not welcome you. He may actively oppose it.”

“I don’t care.”

“Your sanity could be in jeopardy.”

“My sanity is already in jeopardy.”

“If I refuse to take you, you will never find him.”

“If you refuse to take me,” I said, “you’re no friend of mine.”

“Don’t say that, Ellis.”

“You’re no friend of mine,” I repeated.

“You don’t mean it. You’re distraught.”

I flung the chessboard off the bench, scattering pieces in the grass. “You’re god damned right I’m distraught. I’m going out of my mind. I don’t know where I am, or even who I am. And I can’t take it anymore. I’m cracking up. I wouldn’t be in this position except for the Harbingers, so I want to talk to the only one I can get to. And you’re going to lead me to him, or you’re
no fucking friend of mine
!”

Laird was still holding a castle in his fingers. “You were mellower when you were Zinged,” he said.

“Laird.”

“All right. Very well.”

“Very well what?”

“I’ll take you to the Harbinger of the Deadlands.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. At this stage it is the worst course you could choose.”

“I appreciate your concern.”

“Your appreciation is of little moment, if your mind is shattered.”

“That would make a good t-shirt,” I said.

Laird farted.

White gold ring on a fine link chain
. I hung it around my neck and tucked it inside my bodysuit. An object with a history and emotional significance to ground me in some kind of reality. I hoped.

We departed the Seventh Dome in an overland vehicle with an armored cab and big balloon mesh tires. Outside the domes the air was breathable, though humid and desert-hot. A few crude roads crisscrossed the planet’s surface. The human population had begun venturing into the open environment, laying down the first preparatory infrastructure for a broader-based colonization. The day would arrive when humanity would swarm the surface, but for now the world was far too unstable to risk en masse movements out of the Domes.

The sky was yellow and white and blue: a pudding sky. And it could turn deadly within moments. Upper and lower air currents were highly erratic, blowing ceaseless hurricanes. That’s why we weren’t flying.

Our vehicle was called a Bus, but it was more like a tank, referring back to those treaded fighting machines built to withstand concentrated assaults of war. We didn’t have treads or weapons, but you could certainly call the weather a concentrated assault.

At forty kilometers per hour we soon left the Domes behind, lost in billowing spumes of wind-whipped dust. Laird drove and I drank coffee. It was an okay arrangement, but I wished I had more to do besides think.

“How far is it?” I asked.

“At this speed, about ten hours into the Deadlands.”

“Does the Harbinger have a name?”

Laird turned his head and looked at me but didn’t reply.

“I’m just asking.”

“Probably,” he said.

“Probably what?”

“Probably it has a name, but I have no idea what it might be.”

“What does it look like?”

“You’ve seen them.”

“Whenever I saw them it was in a dream, or some kind of vision. I don’t know if I ever
really
saw one. I mean, I always had the impression that their appearance was, I don’t know, kind of a metaphor.”

Laird percolated noisily.

“In a sense,” he said, “they are more idea than being.”

“You’ll have to explain that one,” I said.

“I can’t.”

We drove on. I cranked my seat back and tried to focus my mind. One thing that worried me was the possibility that I would suffer another cognitive lapse and not even remember my encounter with the Harbinger. And now that I’d decided to seek this one out I was
intent
on it.

Then Laird said: “Something up ahead.”

I sat forward. “What is it?”

“Don’t know.”

He slowed the Bus down. We stared at the monitor. A shape emerged out of the blowing dust, dead ahead in the middle of the road. Laird slowed the Bus further and came to a full stop. We zoomed in on the shape and could see it was two vehicles tangled up in an apocalyptic wreck. One of the vehicles was a Bus similar to our own. The other was alien in design, though it was difficult to discern its original features out of the mangled heap it had become. But I knew it was alien. I picked up its vibe like a signal fired straight into the center of my brain.

Laird started to drive around it.

“Wait,” I said.

I uncovered the window so I could see it directly, without the intervention of the monitor.

“Move closer,” I said.

“That isn’t a good idea.”

“Just do it, okay?”

He rolled us up to the wreck and stopped again.

“There was a woman in the hospital with me,” I said. “She had been in some kind of accident involving the Trau’dorians. It killed her son and almost killed her. I wonder if this is the wreck.”

“We should be moving on.”

“I want to have a closer look.”

“If you wish my advice—”

“I don’t.”

“My advice is you forget about this accident and turn back to the Dome. If you won’t turn back to the Dome, then at least allow me to drive around and continue on to the Harbinger.”

“I’m going out to have a closer look.”

“No.”

But I was already out of my seat. I donned a pair of goggles and went to the door. “I’ll be right back.”

“We mustn’t stay here. This is exactly what I feared would happen.”

I thumbed the open switch. The door at the rear of the Bus raised up, admitting a blast of furnace wind and stinging particulate. I hopped down to the road and closed the door. The wind staggered me until I found my balance and began moving along the side of the Bus.

At the front of the Bus I halted a moment then stepped forward, leaning into the wind. Up close to the wreck I saw no indication of fire. Dust hissed through the twisted and punctured vehicles. They looked like two metal monsters in savage copulation.

I looked into the passenger cabin of the crashed Bus. Definitely no fire. And that seemed to support Mrs. James’ version of events.

A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped, ripping my tunic on a sharp jag of metal.

“Sorry,” Laird said.

I touched the tender skin around the fresh cut on my upper left arm.

“Don’t creep up on me like that, okay?”

“I didn’t creep.”

We were shouting over the howling wind.

“There wasn’t any fire,” I said.

“It doesn’t appear so. Let’s get back to the Bus and move on.”

“The officials told Mrs. James that her son had been burned to ashes. They lied.”

Laird stood statue still in the gale.

“And look at this,” I said. “The Trau’dorian vehicle wasn’t even designed to carry passengers. It’s a drone, probably operated by remote control. Deliberately crashed into the Bus. Just like Mrs. James said.”

“Come on now,” is all Laird said, and he stumped back to our Bus. I followed him. Inside, the comparative quiet was deafening, like cotton wads cranked into my ears. And my ears
were
clotted with wind-driven dust. I was sweating, and every inch of exposed skin was coated with dust.

I removed my goggles and bent over the little wash basin, splashed cold water on my face, rinsing the dust away.

Laird started the Bus.

“Wait,” I said. “Hold on.”

“If you want to see the Harbinger we must go now,” he said.

I came forward, drying my face with a towel. “The Harbinger has been out there meditating for decades. I doubt if he’s going anywhere soon. I want to check something out.”

“Ellis—”

“The Trau’dorians live underground. If what Mrs. James said is true, they must have come up out of one of their holes and taken the boy down with them. That’s my guess.”

“Even if it’s true,” Laird said, “of what use is it?”

“The Dome authorities don’t want to pursue the issue. They want to call it an accident and forget about it. If Mrs. James’ son was taken down, we’re the only ones who will bother to even look.”

“I strongly encourage you to abandon that idea,” Laird said.

“Turn on the thermal imager. Let’s look for the tunnel opening.”

Laird hesitated a long moment. I was about to reach across him and do it myself. But then he moved his hand over the panel, and we both watched the T.M. screen survey the immediate vicinity. Nothing. I desperately wanted to see the tunnel. It was hot outside anyway, but a hotter spot suddenly appeared, a dark red blotch.

“I bet that’s it,” I said.

“Perhaps. Can we go now, please?”

“Are you kidding? We have to get down there.”

“No, we don’t. Ellis, this is the danger I spoke of. This is the danger of your mind not fully prepared and distracting you.”

I stopped listening to him. He wasn’t human and couldn’t understand that I needed to find out about Mrs. James’ boy. And perhaps Mrs. James herself. Dr. Tamara had told me the woman had been released and was living in the Dome. But I’d never seen her in all the years.

“I—”

I stopped.

“My God,” I said.

“Yes, Ellis.”

“By now the boy has to be long dead, and his mother too. It’s been years and years.”

“Yes,” Laird said.

A tidal surge of unreality moved through me. I shut my eyes and felt I was tumbling in the dark. I held onto the back of my seat and rode it out.

“I’m not creeping this time,” Laird said, and touched my shoulder comfortingly. His hand was surprisingly light and  . . . human.

“It might be best if we returned to the Dome now,” he said. But it wasn’t his voice, wasn’t his voice at all. It was a female voice, soothing, gentle, infinitely empathetic.

I forced myself to turn my head and look.

But it was only Laird in the RODNEY biomechanical body, his heavy hand like a gauntlet weight on my shoulder.

“I’m going down there anyway,” I said.

“There’s no reason to,” he said.

“There is a reason. I want to know what happened to Mrs. James and her son. Even if they’re dead now, I want to know. They deserve that much, don’t they?”

Laird remained mum.

I equipped myself with a flashlight, a clean pair of goggles, a water flask, and a sidearm.

“Are you coming?” I said.

He shook his head. “I cannot accompany you into that place. All I can do is beg you not to go.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, but it hurt. My only friend in the world was cutting me loose. And he wasn’t even a human being.

Outside I pointed myself in the right direction and started walking. The wind buffeted me, tore at my clothes. With all the blowing dust it was difficult to even see the ground, let alone locate what I hoped would be a tunnel opening.

Suddenly a bright spear of light stabbed through the churning dust. I looked over my shoulder. Laird had turned on the searchlight attached to the roof of the Bus. He waved at me through the window, pointed and nodded. I got it: he was showing me the way to the hotspot. I waved back.

The searchlight beam terminated at a patch of ground about thirty meters ahead of me. When I got there all I saw was more hardscrabble. I hunkered, balancing on the balls of my feet, and placed the flat of my left hand on the ground. It was hot, all right.

I stood back and un-holstered my sidearm, took aim, and fired. An energy flash instantly scoured away the hardscrabble, revealing a dull metallic surface. I nodded, fired again, holding the trigger down, releasing continuous pulsations of plasma energy. The metal superheated and began to melt. A big hunk of it fell away and clanged noisily. I released the trigger.

The edge of the burn-through glowed orange. I pointed my flashlight down the hole. There was a short vertical drop and then a tunnel. I jumped and landed on my feet. The opening I’d made was low enough that I could reach my hand up through it.

Flashlight in one hand, sidearm in the other, I started down the tunnel. The deeper I went the hotter it became. I’d thought it was too sultry on the surface of the planet; True to their appearance, the Trau’dorians must thrive in Hellish swelter.

The tunnel was crude. I’d burned my way through a trapdoor fixed to a framework, but the tunnel itself was hard packed earth. The walls gleamed, coated with some kind of resin. I toiled onward through perfect darkness, except for my flashlight.