“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 thirty
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 he 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 so 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.
But the way was then clear for the younger members of the party
who made the climb with more agility and speed. They emerged in
another stone-walled place. Above their heads, well above, was an
opening to the night sky, with a star or two winking there in
reassurance; and the fresh air felt good after that passage.
Before Stroud snapped off the light, Nick caught sight of the
charred remnants of what must once have been beams protruding in
places from the wall above, marking the sites of perhaps two upper
floors. And there was a mass of fallen debris underfoot so they
linked hands in the dark and moved with caution toward the open
arch of a door.
Vegetation masked the ruin rankly on the outside. Bushes Stroud
had been holding aside snapped back when the last person was
through the door, covering the door from sight. Nick saw the rise
of the ridge now at his back.
Outside the tower they had more light than the natural night
offered. It sprang rainbow hued from some ground source ahead,
hidden by the trees and brush which so well cloaked the ruin.
At Stroud’s order they kept close together. If the Warden
was no trained woodsman, he did his best, as did the others,
following his example, to keep their passage as noiseless as
possible. They were angling right, and with every step they took,
the growth about them thinned, the light grew brighter—until at
last there was only a thin screen of branches through which Nick
saw the city.
The wonder of that sight stopped him short so that Crocker
bumped into him. But he paid no attention to the pilot, he was
entranced by what he saw.
It arose abruptly, without any outlying clusters of buildings,
even as they had said. And it towered until he thought that its
spires might well dispute the stars. For it was all towers and
spires, reaching shafts like longing arms held up to the wonders of
space.
What might be the material of those distant buildings Nick could
not begin to speculate. He could not equate stone with the constant
play of color. For that blaze of brilliance, which radiated from
the walls to light the night, was not constant in any one place.
Rainbow-mixed shades, light and dark, rippled and flared, to die
down, before once more flaming up.
Strange as the city was it did not seem alien to the ground on
which it rested. There was the green of woodlands in its sheen, the
gold of meadow flowers, the rust red of bark, the blue, the silver
gray of water, the pale pink of blossoming fruit trees, the ruddy,
heavy splendor of that same fruit come to full ripeness. It was all
the colors of the earth mingled joyfully together.
For the city did not frighten, it did not awe. The emotion that
filled Nick as he gazed upon it was happy excitement. Something
that had long been sought, that had been glimpsed imperfectly,
perhaps in a dream, now stood proud and magnificent before him.
“Come on, you fool!” Crocker caught him, gave a jerk
hard enough to break Nick’s daze. “What’s the
matter with you?”
“It’s wonderful!” Nick wanted to run straight
across the open to the city.
“It’s a trap!” The pilot was uncompromising,
harsh. “They set it for us. Don’t look at
it.”
Was Crocker right? Nick could not believe him. But the distant
towers did draw him. And now that he had passed his initial wonder,
he distrusted that longing a little.
Yet it was still with reluctance that he moved on, edging always
to the east after Stroud and the rest. Crocker matched step with
him as if he feared that Nick might suddenly take off.
They had not progressed far before Stroud hissed a warning and
they halted. To the west, figures came into the light. There was no
mistaking the long-legged creature that paced ahead of that group—a
Herald “horse.”
But there was no one on its back, rather the brilliantly coated
one who was the creature’s master walked behind. With him
were three others, a strangely assorted group.
There was a man wearing the drab uniform of those Nick had seen
netted, and behind him—surely that was one of the suited aliens
from a saucer. Yet here they walked as if they were not enemies,
both with their eyes fixed on the Herald. The third was a
woman.
“Rita!” Crocker cried.
Nick would have thought the party too far away for any to be
recognized. But he could read on the pilot’s face the
conviction that the green figure was his lost friend.
A sharp noise in the sky. This time it was not one of the
saucers that appeared out of nowhere, rather one of the
cigar-shaped craft.
It shot earthward as if about to bury its nose in the soil. From
it pulsated sharp bursts of light. They struck around the advancing
party—who paid them no heed—bringing wisps of smoke from charred
stretches of ground. The rays were obviously deflected and struck
at angles to either side or the rear of those on foot.
Overhead the flyer made reckless darts, as if its pilot was
determined to stop the others if he had to ram his craft into them.
But in every one of those dives the ship wavered from side to side
and the effort with which the pilot maintained control was
manifest.
All this time it would appear that the four people and the
“horse,” were entirely oblivious to the attack. They
did not turn from the straightest route to the city. And Nick could
imagine the frustration of their attacker.
At length the flyer’s pilot must have accepted defeat. The
craft skimmed back toward the ridge, streaking off at incredible
speed. But the party on foot continued their even-paced way,
unruffled and undaunted.
Nick was impressed. He had a real safety blanket, did the
Herald. With such protection he could travel anywhere and not
worry. If a man could just discover how that worked! Nick watched
the Herald speculatively, wondering why he now walked instead of
rode. Was that so his protection covered those he led? If they only
had his secret!
The Herald and the city, one or the other was the key. And Nick
was sure they merited a detailed study. The Herald went out of the
city, so he would be easier to check on. A man could not enter the
city without the Herald—but could a Herald be held for ransom?
That might be utterly impossible. They had just had a
demonstration of how impervious the Herald and those under his
protection were to force. And there was no use in trying to talk
the English into such an attempt—not until Nick had a plan that had
an even chance of working. But he would continue to think about
it.
The pace of the Herald’s party must have been swifter than
it seemed, or else the city was closer, for they were almost there
now.
“That was Rita!” Crocker said.
“She’s helping them set their traps for poor fools,
marching them in!” He balled one hand into a fist, struck it
into the open palm of the other with force. “She’s
helping them!”
“Why not?” Jean asked. “She is one of them
now.”
She stood to the other side of Crocker, not looking at the
pilot, but rather at the city. When she spoke again it was in a
lower voice that embarrassed Nick for he could not move out of
hearing and he knew it was not meant for him.
“She is gone, Barry. And you cannot bring her back—let
her go. You won’t be whole again until you do.”
“Let me alone!” Crocker flung out his arm. He did
not quite touch Jean, but the force of his voice was close to a
blow. “I know she’s gone—but let me alone!” He
plunged past, her and there was a stir among the rest where they
huddled. Stroud started them moving to the east, and a little later
they began to lose the glow of the city in a darkness that seemed
twice as heavy and drear because it was away from the strange
glory—the promise behind.
Nick caught at that half-conscious thought. No, he must not
allow his momentary enchantment at the first sight of the city to
influence him now. There were traps aplenty here without allowing
himself to be beguiled by such an obvious one.
“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 thirty
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 he 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 so 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.
But the way was then clear for the younger members of the party
who made the climb with more agility and speed. They emerged in
another stone-walled place. Above their heads, well above, was an
opening to the night sky, with a star or two winking there in
reassurance; and the fresh air felt good after that passage.
Before Stroud snapped off the light, Nick caught sight of the
charred remnants of what must once have been beams protruding in
places from the wall above, marking the sites of perhaps two upper
floors. And there was a mass of fallen debris underfoot so they
linked hands in the dark and moved with caution toward the open
arch of a door.
Vegetation masked the ruin rankly on the outside. Bushes Stroud
had been holding aside snapped back when the last person was
through the door, covering the door from sight. Nick saw the rise
of the ridge now at his back.
Outside the tower they had more light than the natural night
offered. It sprang rainbow hued from some ground source ahead,
hidden by the trees and brush which so well cloaked the ruin.
At Stroud’s order they kept close together. If the Warden
was no trained woodsman, he did his best, as did the others,
following his example, to keep their passage as noiseless as
possible. They were angling right, and with every step they took,
the growth about them thinned, the light grew brighter—until at
last there was only a thin screen of branches through which Nick
saw the city.
The wonder of that sight stopped him short so that Crocker
bumped into him. But he paid no attention to the pilot, he was
entranced by what he saw.
It arose abruptly, without any outlying clusters of buildings,
even as they had said. And it towered until he thought that its
spires might well dispute the stars. For it was all towers and
spires, reaching shafts like longing arms held up to the wonders of
space.
What might be the material of those distant buildings Nick could
not begin to speculate. He could not equate stone with the constant
play of color. For that blaze of brilliance, which radiated from
the walls to light the night, was not constant in any one place.
Rainbow-mixed shades, light and dark, rippled and flared, to die
down, before once more flaming up.
Strange as the city was it did not seem alien to the ground on
which it rested. There was the green of woodlands in its sheen, the
gold of meadow flowers, the rust red of bark, the blue, the silver
gray of water, the pale pink of blossoming fruit trees, the ruddy,
heavy splendor of that same fruit come to full ripeness. It was all
the colors of the earth mingled joyfully together.
For the city did not frighten, it did not awe. The emotion that
filled Nick as he gazed upon it was happy excitement. Something
that had long been sought, that had been glimpsed imperfectly,
perhaps in a dream, now stood proud and magnificent before him.
“Come on, you fool!” Crocker caught him, gave a jerk
hard enough to break Nick’s daze. “What’s the
matter with you?”
“It’s wonderful!” Nick wanted to run straight
across the open to the city.
“It’s a trap!” The pilot was uncompromising,
harsh. “They set it for us. Don’t look at
it.”
Was Crocker right? Nick could not believe him. But the distant
towers did draw him. And now that he had passed his initial wonder,
he distrusted that longing a little.
Yet it was still with reluctance that he moved on, edging always
to the east after Stroud and the rest. Crocker matched step with
him as if he feared that Nick might suddenly take off.
They had not progressed far before Stroud hissed a warning and
they halted. To the west, figures came into the light. There was no
mistaking the long-legged creature that paced ahead of that group—a
Herald “horse.”
But there was no one on its back, rather the brilliantly coated
one who was the creature’s master walked behind. With him
were three others, a strangely assorted group.
There was a man wearing the drab uniform of those Nick had seen
netted, and behind him—surely that was one of the suited aliens
from a saucer. Yet here they walked as if they were not enemies,
both with their eyes fixed on the Herald. The third was a
woman.
“Rita!” Crocker cried.
Nick would have thought the party too far away for any to be
recognized. But he could read on the pilot’s face the
conviction that the green figure was his lost friend.
A sharp noise in the sky. This time it was not one of the
saucers that appeared out of nowhere, rather one of the
cigar-shaped craft.
It shot earthward as if about to bury its nose in the soil. From
it pulsated sharp bursts of light. They struck around the advancing
party—who paid them no heed—bringing wisps of smoke from charred
stretches of ground. The rays were obviously deflected and struck
at angles to either side or the rear of those on foot.
Overhead the flyer made reckless darts, as if its pilot was
determined to stop the others if he had to ram his craft into them.
But in every one of those dives the ship wavered from side to side
and the effort with which the pilot maintained control was
manifest.
All this time it would appear that the four people and the
“horse,” were entirely oblivious to the attack. They
did not turn from the straightest route to the city. And Nick could
imagine the frustration of their attacker.
At length the flyer’s pilot must have accepted defeat. The
craft skimmed back toward the ridge, streaking off at incredible
speed. But the party on foot continued their even-paced way,
unruffled and undaunted.
Nick was impressed. He had a real safety blanket, did the
Herald. With such protection he could travel anywhere and not
worry. If a man could just discover how that worked! Nick watched
the Herald speculatively, wondering why he now walked instead of
rode. Was that so his protection covered those he led? If they only
had his secret!
The Herald and the city, one or the other was the key. And Nick
was sure they merited a detailed study. The Herald went out of the
city, so he would be easier to check on. A man could not enter the
city without the Herald—but could a Herald be held for ransom?
That might be utterly impossible. They had just had a
demonstration of how impervious the Herald and those under his
protection were to force. And there was no use in trying to talk
the English into such an attempt—not until Nick had a plan that had
an even chance of working. But he would continue to think about
it.
The pace of the Herald’s party must have been swifter than
it seemed, or else the city was closer, for they were almost there
now.
“That was Rita!” Crocker said.
“She’s helping them set their traps for poor fools,
marching them in!” He balled one hand into a fist, struck it
into the open palm of the other with force. “She’s
helping them!”
“Why not?” Jean asked. “She is one of them
now.”
She stood to the other side of Crocker, not looking at the
pilot, but rather at the city. When she spoke again it was in a
lower voice that embarrassed Nick for he could not move out of
hearing and he knew it was not meant for him.
“She is gone, Barry. And you cannot bring her back—let
her go. You won’t be whole again until you do.”
“Let me alone!” Crocker flung out his arm. He did
not quite touch Jean, but the force of his voice was close to a
blow. “I know she’s gone—but let me alone!” He
plunged past, her and there was a stir among the rest where they
huddled. Stroud started them moving to the east, and a little later
they began to lose the glow of the city in a darkness that seemed
twice as heavy and drear because it was away from the strange
glory—the promise behind.
Nick caught at that half-conscious thought. No, he must not
allow his momentary enchantment at the first sight of the city to
influence him now. There were traps aplenty here without allowing
himself to be beguiled by such an obvious one.