Special Deliverance (21 page)

“There’s no way back?” asked Jorgenson. “No way back to the worlds you came from?”

“None that we have found,” said Correy. “Not that we have sought extensively. A few of us have. Most just hunker down.”

The evening meal was ready to be dished up by the time they arrived at the camp. They sat down, the three of them, in a circle with all the others about the central campfire and were given bowls of stewed rabbit and others of boiled, mixed vegetables and platters of crisp-fried fish. There was no coffee or tea, only water to drink. There was not a salad, as Correy had said there might be.

Many of the people in the camp, perhaps all of them (Lansing tried to keep count, but lost the count) came to shake their hands and welcome them. Most of them spoke in foreign tongues, a few in broken English. There were two other than Correy for whom English was a native language. Both of them were women, and immediately they squatted down with Melissa and the three of them jabbered away at an alarming rate.

The food, despite the lack of salt, was good.

“You said you lack salt,” Lansing said to Correy, “and probably a number of other things. Yet you say that Mrs. Mason secured seed for your garden and your patch of corn. Won’t she get you salt and other necessities you need?”

“Oh, most willingly,” said Correy, “but we have no money. The treasury has run out. Perhaps earlier we spent it more freely than was wise.”

“I have some left,” said Lansing. “Would a donation be in order?”

“I would not wish to solicit funds,” said Correy, “but if, of your own free will…”

“I’ll leave a small sum with you.”

“You’re not staying with us? You are welcome, as you must know.”

“I told you I was going to the city.”

“Yes, I do recall.”

“I’ll be glad to spend the night,” Lansing told him. “In the morning I will leave.”

“Perhaps you will come back.”

“You mean if I don’t find Mary.”

“Even if you find her. Any time you wish. She’ll be welcome if she returns with you.”

Lansing looked about the camp. It was not the sort of place where he would care to settle down. Life here would be hard. There would be unremitting labor—chopping and bringing in wood, taking care of the garden and the cornfield, the never-ending scrounging for food. There would be bitter little rivalries, the flaring of tempers, incessant squabbling.

“We have worked out a primitive way of life,” said Correy, “and we manage rather well. There are fish to be taken from the river, the valleys and the hills have game. Some of us have become experts at trapping—there are a number of rabbits. More some years than others. A couple of years ago, when a drought hit us, all of us worked hard and long, carrying water from the river for the garden and the corn. But we managed; we had a splendid harvest.”

“It’s amazing,” Lansing said, “such a varied mix of people. Or I suppose it’s varied.”

“Very much so,” Correy said. “In my former life I was a member of a diplomatic corps. We have, among others, a geologist, a farmer who once owned and worked thousands of acres, a certified public accountant, a noted and once-pampered actress, a woman noted as an eminent historian, a social worker, a banker. I could go on and on.”

“Have you, in the time that you and the others have had to think about it, arrived at any conclusions as to why we all may have been brought here?”

“No, not actually. There are many speculations, as you may guess, but nothing solid. There are those who think they know, but I’m quite certain that they don’t. There are people, you understand, who find a certain stability in convincing themselves they are right about even the most fantastic notions. It gives them something they can cling to, a certainty that they know what is going on, that they know while all the rest of us are groping in the dark.”

“And you? Yourself?”

“I am one of those people who is cursed by being able to see both sides, or the many sides, of a question. As a diplomat, it was imperative that I should. I find it necessary to be strictly honest with myself; I will not allow myself to fool myself.”

“So you have no hard conviction?”

“Not a single one. All of it is as much a mystery to me as the day that I arrived.”

“What do you know of the country we’ll be traveling to reach the city? How about the badlands?”

“It’s rough and hilly,” said Correy, “so far as we have ventured. Forest mostly. But not hard going. The badlands I do not know about. We have not come upon them. They must lie east of here.”

“You are quite content to stay here? You have not ventured farther? You have not looked?”

“Not content,” said Correy, “but what is there to do? Some of us have gone north to Chaos. Did you go that far?”

“I did. I lost a good friend there.”

“The north is closed by Chaos,” Correy said. “There is no getting past it. What it is, I do not know, but it blocks the way. For a hundred miles or more beyond the tower is nothing but man-killing desert. To the south, so far as we have gone, there seems no promise. So now you go back to the city, hoping you will find something that you missed.”

“No,” said Lansing. “I am going to find Mary. I must find her. She and I are the only ones of our band who are left. The other four were lost.”

“The two who are with you?”

“They were not with us to start with. They are from another group. We found them at the inn.”

“They seem to be nice people,” said Correy. “Here they come, to join us.”

Lansing looked up and saw Jorgenson and Melissa walking around the circle. Jorgenson, coming up, squatted down in front of him. Melissa remained standing. “Melissa and I want to tell you something,” Jorgenson said. “We’re sorry, but we’re not going with you. We’ve decided to stay here.”

I
T WAS JUST AS well, Lansing told himself. He could travel easier and faster by himself. Since morning he had covered a lot of ground—more, he was convinced, than he would have covered if the other two had been tagging along. More than that, he hadn’t liked either one of them. Melissa was a whining bitch and Jorgenson was an unlovely bastard.

If he had regretted leaving anyone, it had been Correy. Though he had spent only a few hours with him, he had liked the man. He had given him somewhat more than half of the coins that still were left and had shaken hands with him. In accepting the donation, Correy had been studiously gracious, thanking him not for himself but for the band.

“I shall husband this sudden wealth in the common interest,” he had said. “I know, given the chance, everyone would thank you.”

“Think nothing of it,” Lansing had told him. “Mary and I may be back.”

“We’ll keep a place beside the fire for you,” Correy had told him. “I hope most sincerely you don’t have to come back. Life here is not a good prospect. Maybe you’ll find a way out. Some of us must. I hope you do.”

He had not thought until Correy had spoken so that there remained any hope of finding a way out of the situation. Long ago, he realized, he had given up such hope. His one hope had been to find Mary so that together they could face whatever was in store for them.

He thought about it as he trudged along. Correy, he knew, had spoken more cheerfully than he’d really thought, but the question still remained—could there yet remain some hope? Logic said that hope was slight, and he was a trifle disgusted at himself for entertaining any thought of it. Yet, as he walked along, he still could detect, deep inside himself, that small, faint glimmer of it.

The travel was comparatively easy. The hills were steep, but the forest was open. There was no water problem. Time after time he came on small creeks and rills running between the hills.

By nightfall he came upon the badlands. They were not, however, the colorful nightmare his band had traversed after leaving the city. These were small badlands, the beginning of badlands that had stopped before going far. Here the action of primeval water had not finished with its job. The rains had stopped, the massive erosion had been ended before full badlands had developed. There were small floodplains, a few deeply channeled gulches, fantastically carved formations that were not complete, as if a sculptor had thrown away his mallet and chisel, in frustration or disgust, before his work was done.

“Tomorrow,” Lansing said, speaking aloud to himself, “I will reach the city.”

He did reach it the next day, just after the sun had marked off noon. He stood on one of the high hills that ringed it in and looked out over it. Down there, he thought, Mary could be waiting for him, and when he thought it, he found that he was trembling.

He plunged down the hill and found a street that led to the city’s heart. It all had the old, familiar look to it—the red, eroded walls, the blocks of fallen stone cluttering the street, the dust over everything.

In the plaza he halted and looked around to orient himself. Once he had gotten his directions straightened out, he knew where he was. Over there to the left was the broken façade of the so-called administration building, with the single tower still standing, and down a street eater-cornered to it he would find the installation.

Standing In the plaza, be called for Mary, but there was no answer. He called a few more times and then he called no more, for the haunting echo of his voice, reverberating back to him, was terrifying.

He walked across the plaza to the administration building and climbed the broad stone stairs to reach the entrance hall where they had camped. His footsteps raised booming echoes that sounded like querulous voices crying out to him. He prowled about the hall and found evidence of their having been there, an emptied can or two, an emptied cracker box, a mug that someone had forgotten. He wanted to go down into the basement and look at the doors, but he was afraid to. He started several times and each time turned back. What was he afraid of? he asked himself—afraid that he would find one of the doors, perhaps the one to the apple-blossom world, had been opened? No, he told himself—no, no, Mary never would do that. Not now would she do it, maybe later on when all hope of finding him was gone, that and all other hope, but certainly not now. Perhaps, he thought, it would be impossible for anyone to do it. The Brigadier had carried away the wrench, probably had hidden it somewhere. Never again, the Brigadier had vowed, would a door be opened.

Standing silently, unmoving in the entrance hall, he seemed to hear their voices, talking not to him, but to one another. He tried to shut his ears to them, but the voices still persisted.

He had planned to camp there, but decided that he couldn’t. There were too many voices, the memories were too thick. So he moved out into the center of the plaza and began hauling in wood from wherever he could find it. All the rest of the afternoon he worked, building a good-sized woodpile. Then, as dark came down, he made a fire and fed it to make it bright and high. If Mary should be in the city, or approaching it or somewhere watching it, she would see the fire and know that someone was there.

On a smaller fire he boiled coffee and cooked some food.

As he ate, he attempted to work out a plan of action, but all that he could think of was to search the city, every street if need be. Although, he told himself, that would be wasted effort. If Mary was in the city, or even now be coming up on it, she would head straight for the plaza, knowing that anyone else who came to the city would do the same.

The Wailer came out on the hills when the moon came up and cried out its agony of loneliness. Lansing sat beside the fire and listened, crying out and answering with his own loneliness.

“Come down here to the fire, with me,” he told the Wailer, “and we can mourn together.”

It was not until then that the realization struck him that the loneliness might keep on and on, that he might never find Mary. He tried to envision how it might be to never see her again, to continue life without her, and how it might be for her. He quailed at the thought of it and huddled closer to the fire, but there was no warmth in it.

He tried to sleep; he slept but little. In the morning he started his search. Gritting his teeth against the fear, he visited the doors. None of them had been opened. He searched out the installation and went down the stairs that led to it. For a long time he stood listening to the song the machines were crooning to themselves. He searched streets haphazardly, inattentively, knowing that he was wasting time. But he kept on, for there was a need to keep busy, to keep himself distracted and somehow occupied.

For four days he searched and found nothing. Then he wrote a note to Mary and left it, weighed down by the mug someone had forgotten, beside the old campfire in the administration building, and took the trail back to the cube and inn.

How long had it been, he wondered, since he first had found himself upon this world? He tried to count the days, but his memory was hazed and he lost track each time he tried to count. A month, he wondered, could it have been no more than a month? Thinking back, it seemed half of all the time there was.

He tried to spot landmarks along the trail. Here we had camped, he’d tell himself, here is where Mary had seen the faces in the sky. Over there is where Jurgens had found the spring. Here is where I had cut the wood. But he was never sure if he was right or not. It was too deep into the past, he told himself, a month into the past.

Finally he came to a hilltop from which he could sight the cube. It still was there, as bright and classically beautiful as he remembered it. For a moment he was surprised to see it—not that he hadn’t expected to find it, but he would not have been greatly surprised if he had not found it. This world, during the last few days, had seemed to assume a phantom quality, with him walking through a vacuum.

He walked down the switchbacks that wound down the long, steep hillside and reached the hill-rimmed bowl where the cube was sited. As he came around the final bend in the road before it reached the cube, he saw that someone was there. He had not seen them before, but now there they were, the four of them sitting on the stone slab that he and Mary had uncovered, the slab that was located at the edge of the circle of white sand surrounding the cube. They sat there, cross-legged, and played their unending game of cards.

They did not notice him when he walked up to them, and he stood for a while to watch them at their play.

Then he said, “I think I should thank you gentlemen for throwing me the rope.”

At his words, they looked up and stared at him out of their white-china faces with the round, browless eyeholes and the black agates suspended in the eyeholes, the twin slashes for nostrils and the one slash for the mouth.

They said nothing, only stared at him, expressionless, although he thought that he saw some annoyance and rebuke in those smooth white faces, like white, round doorknobs with faces painted on them.

Then one of them said, “Please move on. You are standing in our light.”

Lansing backed up a step or two, then after a pause backed away until he was standing on the road. The four card players already had gone back to their play.

Mary had not been in the city, he thought; had she been she would have seen his fire and come to it. And she was not here. There was one more place to look.

Doggedly he went on down the road, with no hope left, but still driven by the necessity to continue his search until there was no place else to go.

Night had fallen when he reached the inn. No light showed in the windows, no smoke issued from the chimney. Somewhere in the woods a lonely owl was hooting.

Walking up to the door, he seized the latch. It did not respond to the pressure of his thumb; apparently it was locked. He knocked on the door and there was no answer. He ceased his knocking and listened for the scuff of feet across the floor within. Hearing nothing, he knotted his fists and hammered at the door. Suddenly the door came open and, leaning as he had been in his vigorous pounding, he stumbled across the threshold.

Mine Host stood just inside, one hand on the open door and the other holding a stubby candle in his massive fist. He lifted the candle so that its light fell full on Lansing’s face.

“So it’s you,” said Mine Host, in a terrible voice. “What is it that you want?”

“I am looking for a woman. Mary. You remember her?”

“She is not here.”

“Has she been here? Did she come and leave?”

“I have not seen her since you left.”

Lansing swung about and walked to the table by the dark fireplace, sat down in a chair. The wind was out of him. Quite suddenly he felt weak and worthless. This was the end of it. There was no place else to go.

Mine Host closed the door and followed him to the table. He set the candle on it.

“You cannot stay,” he said. “I’m leaving. I’m closing for the winter.”

“Mine Host,” said Lansing, “you forget your manners and neglect your hospitality. I am staying here for the night and you’ll find me food.”

“There is no bed for you,” said Mine Host. “The beds are all made up and I’ll not make one up again. If you wish, you may sleep upon the floor.”

“Most willingly,” said Lansing, “and how about some food?”

“I have a pot of soup. You can have a bowl of that. There is a mutton roast, or what is left of a mutton roast. I think I can find a heel of bread.”

“That will do quite well,” said Lansing.

“You know, of course, you cannot stay. In the morning you must leave.”

“Yes, of course,” said Lansing, too weary to argue.

He sat in the chair and watched Mine Host lumber toward the kitchen, where a dim light shone. Supper, he thought, and a floor to sleep upon and in the morning he would leave. Once he left, where would he go? Back up the road again, most likely, past the cube and then on to the city, still searching for Mary, but with slight hope of finding her. More than likely in the end he would wind up in the camp beside the river, with the other lost ones who were scratching out a life of sorts. It was a dismal prospect and one that he did not care to face, yet it probably was the only option that was left to him. If he should find Mary, what then? Would the two of them in the end be forced to seek refuge in the camp? He shivered, thinking of it.

Mine Host brought in the food and thumped it on the table in front of Lansing, then turned to leave.

“Just a moment,” Lansing said. “I’ll need to buy supplies before I leave.”

“I can let you have all the food you wish,” said the innkeeper, “but the rest of the merchandise is packed away.”

“That’s all right,” said Lansing. “It’s mainly food I need.”

The soup was tasty; the bread was days old and hard, but he dipped it in the soup and ate it. He had never cared for mutton, let alone cold mutton, but he ate several thick slices of it and he was glad to have it.

The next morning, after a bad night’s sleep and a breakfast of oatmeal, grudgingly provided by Mine Host, Lansing, after some haggling over payment, bought a supply of food and started up the road.