Cemetery World (11 page)

Looking back, not watching where I was going, I ran into a cornstack and, toppling it, went down on top of it.

By the time I disentangled myself and was on my feet again, Elmer and Bronco had gone on past me and were disappearing over the brow of the moonlit hill. I sprinted after them. My face and hands smarted and burned from their forcible contact with the sun-dried corn leaves and when I put my hand up to my face it came away wet and sticky with blood oozing from the cuts the dry, sharp leaves had inflicted on my skin.

I went plunging down the hill below the brow and far ahead of me saw the whiteness of Cynthia’s jacket, almost at the woods that ran below the field. Not far behind her were Bronco and Elmer. Bronco had caught the hang of being helped along by Elmer and they were moving rapidly.

The stubs of the cut corn and the autumn-dried weeds that had grown between the rows rasped against my trousers as I ran and behind me I heard the shouts and bellows from the clearing beyond the field.

I reached the fence that ran between the field and woods and there was a gateway through it where Elmer had kicked the boards loose. I plunged through the opening and in among the trees, and here, while there still was moonlight shining through the branches, I had to slow my pace for fear of crashing headlong into one of the trees.

Someone hissed at me, off to one side, and I slowed and swung around. I saw that the three of them were grouped beneath an oak with low-growing branches. Bronco was braced on his six legs and doing fairly well. Elmer was climbing down out of the tree, dragging bundles with him. “I brought them out here and cached them,” he said, “shortly after dark. I had it in my mind something like this might happen.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Someone threw a bomb,” said Elmer.

“Cemetery bomb,” I said. “They had that case of booze.”

“Payment,” Elmer said.

“I suppose so. I had wondered. It was damn good whiskey.”

“But what about the census-taker and the ghosts?” asked Cynthia. “If they were ghosts.” 

“Diversion,” Elmer said.

I shook my head. “It gets too complicated. Everyone couldn’t have been in on it.”

“You underestimate our friends,” said Elmer. “What did you say to Bell?”

“Not a great deal. I resisted being taken over.” Elmer grunted. “That’s lèse majesté,” he said.

“What do we do now?” asked Cynthia. 

Elmer said to Bronco, “Can you manage for a while without me?”

“If I go slow,” said Bronco.

“Fletch will be with you. He can’t hold you up like I can, but if you should fall he can boost you up. With him helping, you can manage. I have to get some tools.”

“You have your kit of tools,” I said. And that was right. He had all those replacement hands and a lot of other things. They were stored in a compartment in his chest.

“I may need a hammer and some heavier stuff. Those legs of Bronco’s are knocked all out of shape. It may take some hammering and refitting to get them back again.

“There’s a tool house back there. It’s locked, but that isn’t any problem.”

“I thought the idea was for us to get away. If you go back there …”

“They’re all upset. That barn is about to go and they’ll be fighting fire. I can slip in and out.”

“You’ll hurry,” Cynthia said.

He nodded. “I’ll hurry. The three of you go down this hill until you reach a valley, then turn to the right, downstream. You take this pack, Fletch, and Cynthia, you should be able to handle this smaller one. Leave the rest of it for me; I’ll bring it along. Bronco can’t carry anything, the shape that he is in.”

“Just one thing,” I said.

“What is that?”

“How do you know we should turn right, downstream?”

“Because I was out scouting while you were roosting on a fence with your bewhiskered pal and Cynthia was peeling potatoes and performing other housewifely chores. From years of experience I have learned it’s always a good idea to scout out your ground.”

“But where are we heading for?” asked Cynthia.

He told her, “Away from Cemetery. As far as we can get.”

Chapter 10

Bronco had said that he could manage, but it was slow going. The hillside was steep and rough and it was a long way down to the valley and Bronco fell three times before we reached the valley floor. Each time I managed to heave him up, but it took a lot of work and a lot of time.

Behind us, for a while, a brilliance waved and flickered in the sky and it must have been the barn, for a haystack would have burned out more quickly. But by the time we reached the valley the brilliance was gone. The barn either had burned down or the fire had been put out.

The traveling was easier in the valley. The ground was fairly level, although there were rough stretches here and there. There were fewer trees and the moon shed more light than it had on the heavily wooded hillside. Off to our left somewhere a stream was flowing. We did not come across it, but every now and then we could hear the chuckle of its water when apparently it flowed across a gravel bar.

We moved through an eerie world of silver magic and from the hills on either side came, at intervals, a far-off whickering and sometimes other sounds. Once a great bird came floating down above us, with not a whisper from its wings, veering to slide off above a clump of trees.

“If only,” Bronco said, “I had got one leg damaged on either side, it would have caused no trouble, but this business of two legs on one side and four legs on the other is most confusing and makes me ridiculously lopsided.”

“You are doing splendidly,” said Cynthia. “Does it hurt?”

“I have no hurt,” said Bronco. “I cannot have a hurt.”

“You think Cemetery did it,” Cynthia said to me. “And so does Elmer, and so, I would suppose, do I. But surely we can’t pose a threat …”

“Anyone,” I said, “who does not bow down to Cemetery is automatically a threat. They have been here so long, have held the Earth so long, that they cannot bear the slightest interference.”

“But we are no interference.”

“We could be. If we get back to Alden, if we get off Earth with what we came to get, we could interfere with them. We could present a picture of the Earth that is not Cemetery. And it just might catch on, it might gain some public and artistic recognition. The people might be pleased to think the Earth was not entirely Cemetery.”

“Even so,” she said, “it would hurt them in no way. They still could carry on their business. There would be really nothing changed.”

“It would hurt their pride,” I said.

“But pride is such a little thing to hurt—purely personal thing. Whose pride? The pride of Maxwell Peter Bell, the pride of other little autocrats the like of Maxwell Bell. Not the pride of Cemetery. Cemetery is a corporation, a massive corporation. It thinks in terms of income, in the annual business volume, in profits and in costs. There is no place in its ledgers for such a thing as pride. It must be something else, Fletch. It can’t be entirely pride.”

She could be right, I told myself. It could be something more than pride, but what?

“They are used to ruling,” I said. “They can buy anything they want. They hired someone to throw that bomb at Bronco. Even when there was a chance that others would get hurt. Because they don’t care, you see. Just so they get what they want, they do not really care. And they get things cheap. Because of who they are, no one can question what they offer. We know the price of that bomb and it was cheap enough. A case of whiskey. Maybe, if they are to keep an upper hand, they must demonstrate, very forcibly, what happens to those people who slip from beneath their thumb.”

“You keep saying they,” said Cynthia. “There is no they here, there is no Cemetery. There is only one man here.”

“That is true,” I said, “and that is why pride could be a factor. Not so much the pride of Cemetery as the pride of Maxwell Bell.”

The valley spread before us, a broad road of grasses, broken by little clumps of trees and rimmed in by the dark and wooded hills. Off to the left was the stream, but it had been some time since we had heard any sound of it. The ground was level and Bronco was able to proceed without too much trouble, although it was painful to witness his awkward, hobbling gait. But even so, he was easily able to keep up with our human walking.

There was no sign of Elmer. I held my wrist close to my face and my watch said that it was almost two o’clock. I had no idea when we had left the clearing, but thinking back on it, it seemed to me that it could not have been much later than ten, which meant we’d been four hours on the road. I wondered if something might have happened to Elmer. It would not have taken him much time to break into the tool house and get whatever he might need. He would have had to pick up the packs we’d left behind and he’d be hauling quite a load, but even so, the weight should not slow him too much and he’d still travel fairly fast.

If he didn’t show up by daylight, I decided, we’d have to find some place where we could hole up and keep a watch for him. Neither Cynthia nor myself had had any sleep to speak of since we’d reached the Earth and I was beginning to feel it and I supposed that she was, too. Bronco didn’t need to sleep. He could keep a watch for Elmer while we did some sleeping.

“Fletcher,” Cynthia said. She had stopped just ahead of me and I bumped into her. Bronco skidded to a halt. “Smoke,” she said. “I smell smoke. Wood smoke.” I smelled no smoke. “You’re imagining it,” I said. “There is no one here.”

The valley didn’t have the feel of people. It had the feel of moonlight and grass and trees and hills, of light and shadow, night air and flying things. Back in the hills there was the whickering every now and then and other night-time noises, but there were no people, no sense or feel of people.

Then I smelled the smoke, the faintest whiff of it, an acrid tang in the air, there one moment, gone the next.

“You’re right,” I said. “There is a fire somewhere.”

“Fire means people,” Bronco said.

“I’ve had my belly full of people,” Cynthia said. “I don’t want to see anyone for another day or two.”

“Me either,” Bronco said.

We stood there, waiting for another whiff of smoke, but it did not Come.

“There might be no one around,” I said. “A tree struck by lightning days ago and still burning. An old camp fire that no one bothered to put out, still smoldering.”

“We should get under cover,” Cynthia said, “not stay standing out here where anyone can see us.”

“There is a grove over to the left,” said Bronco. “We could get there rather rapidly.”

We turned toward the left, heading for the grove, moving slowly and cautiously. And I thought how silly it all would seem when daylight came, for the fire that produced the smoke could be several miles away. Probably there was no reason to be fearful of it, even so. Provided they were there, whoever had built that fire might be very decent people.

Almost at the grove we stopped to listen and from the direction of the grove came the sound of running water. That was good, I thought. I was getting thirsty. The trees more than likely grew along the stream that ran down through the valley.

We moved in among the trees, half-blinded by the denseness of the shadows underneath them after the bright moonlight in the open and as we moved into the shadows some of them rose up and clubbed me to the ground.

Chapter 11

I had fallen into a lake somehow and was sinking for the third and final time, strangling, with water on my face and water up my nose and no way I could breathe. I gagged and gasped and opened up my eyes and water streaming from my hair ran down across my face.

I saw that I was not in any lake, but rather on dry land, and in the light of a fire that burned a little ways away I could see the dark figure of a man who held a wooden bucket in both hands and I knew that he had thrown a bucket full of water in my face.

I couldn’t see his face too well, with his back turned to the firelight, but he flashed a set of white teeth at me, yelling something in an angry voice I did not understand. There was a terrible ruckus going on off to my right and when I turned my head in that direction I saw that it was Bronco, flat on his back, with a lot of yelling men around him, dodging in and out, trying to get at him. But they weren’t getting at him too well, for even with two busted legs, Bronco had six that weren’t busted and all six of them were busily lashing out at the men around him.

I looked around for Cynthia and saw her by the fire. She was sitting rather awkwardly on the ground and one arm was lifted strangely and I saw that a big man who stood beside her had the raised arm in his grasp and when she tried to get to her feet he twisted it and she sat down again, rather solidly.

I started to get up and as I did the man with the bucket rushed me, swinging the bucket as if he meant to brain me.

I didn’t get clear up, but did manage to get my feet in under me and was in a crouch and when I saw the bucket coming at me, shifted to one side and stretched out an arm. The bucket barely missed me and then, as he came charging in, I had him by the legs. As he fell toward me, I hunched down one shoulder and caught him at the knees and he went catapulting over me to land with a crash behind me. I didn’t wait to see what had happened to him or what he might be doing, but launched myself across the few feet that separated us at the man who had Cynthia by the arm.

He saw me coming and let go of her arm and clawed at his belt for a knife, but he was slow in getting it and I let him have it squarely on the chin, bringing my fist up from somewhere near my boot tops. I swear the blow lifted him a full foot off the ground and his body, stiff as any pole, went toppling backward. He hit the ground and lay there and I reached down and grabbed Cynthia to help her to her feet, although I suspect she had no need of aid.

Even as I helped her to her feet there was a bellowing behind me and as I swung around to face it I saw that the men who had been ganging up on Bronco had left him and were moving in on me.

From that moment when the bucket of water had struck me in the face and revived me from the blow upon the head, I had been too busy to take in much of the detail of the situation we were in, but now I had the time to notice that the men who were advancing upon me were an unsavory lot. Some of them were dressed in what I supposed were buckskins and some of them wore fur caps upon their heads and even in the feeble firelight I could see they were a ragged and a dirty lot and that they moved in slouching crouches, not upright and forthright as a man should walk. Some of them carried guns of some sort, and here and there there were flashes of metal from drawn knives and, all in all, I decided, I did not have much chance to stand against them.