The Heretic (21 page)

“Well, it seems this is the fate you dodged,” Abel replied, gesturing toward the staked-out tribesmen.

“Indeed,” Gaspar said. “Although there was the slower contingent trailing behind our main group, some older people and very young children. The Blaskoye got those.” Gaspar poked a pricklebrush wand into the arm of one of the corpses. It had practically turned to leather, and the wand did not puncture it, but merely left an indentation. “We didn’t expect him to be so fast, you see. He has bred his stock with donts he’s stolen from the Valley. Racing donts, I wouldn’t doubt.”

“Taken, or just as likely traded for,” Abel replied. “In any case, this Rostov seems to be a very organized and dedicated man.”

“He is a thrice-cursed handful of shit, is what he is,” Gaspar said. “It is my belief that the donts run fast because they want to shake him and his kind off themselves and get clean. But they never can, and so they keep running when other animals might tire.”

Abel nodded and left the Remlap chief to his thoughts. He hobbled his dont and set it to forage, and then walked deeper into the mass graveyard. The other squads would arrive and ride through soon, but for now it was just himself and the advance party. He brought his carbine along on the general principle that it did not pay in the Redlands to be more than a pace or two from your weapon at any given time.

Gradually, the shock at the sight of the dead left him, and he examined more closely the object upon which they’d met their deaths. He tried to imagine these masses of what looked like pockmarked stone functioning as a water ram or a gate latch or—

Observe:

The Redlands at about eye-height for a man, but moving through the landscape quickly, as a hunting flitter on a low-gliding path might. Moving over hills, winding through a valley. Enclosed, surrounded by more glass than he’d seen probably in his entire life.

Windows on all sides. A solid roof above to keep out the unremitting sun.

No wind from the forward movement.

So this truly is a mere simulation.

Yes, but a complete one. The front windscreen blocked the wind. Sitting in a groundcar was as wind-calm as sitting in a room of stone.

So they—

Drove in comfort. There was also climate control within, of course.

Abel gave himself over to the experience. His hands on the steering mechanism, a wheel of some sort. Set an elb in front of him and just below sightline: a smooth black tablet or stone with lights and strange hieroglyphics upon it, not of the Land.

Dashboard, vehicle status readouts such as speed, amount of charge in the electrostatic capacitors, antigrav levitation height from ground. I am presenting to you a sports modification of the Maikler 3F Comet, which is a close approximation of what would have been locally configured models.

I want to see this thing! Can you take me outside?

Abel was flying alongside the onrushing groundcar. Its name was not quite accurate, for it hovered at least three elbs off the surface of the ground using some sort of magic.

Antigrav static generators.

It was a sleek creature, made for speed. It was a dark red in color and on the end—

Even in the vision, Abel felt startlement.

Silver. Silver exactly like the Blaskoye’s knife. What had Center called it?

Chrome. These are the bumpers of the groundcar. They are meant to ward off collision damage, but also serve the purpose of ostentatious display.

Rostov’s knife is a car bumper made into a blade?

That is an accurate assessment. Analysis indicates he acquired it from this former parking lot, in fact.

Enough. Take me back inside. I want to drive.

He was back behind the wheel.

How fast?

I will translate the velocity and acceleration readouts—

Abel could suddenly read them: twenty-one leagues per hour.

The control at your right foot affects acceleration.

He pressed down, and the speed increased.

Careful.

The landscape flashed by at eye level. This was better than the ride through the sky he’d taken in his youth. So low to the ground, the speed was exhilarating.

This isn’t real. I want to go even faster.

Your simulation is comprehensive. You can and will crash.

All right, I’ll slow down. Where am I?

You’ve driven about ten leagues from the site.

In how long?

The clock time on this internal simulation is ten point three seven minutes. Of course, barely an eyeblink has passed externally.

I could circle the Redlands in a day,
he thought in amazement.

People frequently did. It was considered a fine holiday outing. There were waypoints with vistas or with eating and drinking establishments. There were inns where visitors could stay for an evening before returning to the Valley. This was the parking lot of such an establishment. The edifice itself is under a nearby sand drift. And, as I mentioned, some of the more affluent built houses in the Redlands for recreational use.

Like a garden plot or a steam house.

Precisely.

But a hundred leagues away.

More, if they wished to fly. There are self-contained dwellings—vacation homes—scattered all over the planet. Most were merely a patch of remains on the landscape at the time I completed my orbital survey. Duisberg has a harsh environment by human standards. It has a comparatively large iron-nickel core that is highly magnetized and extremely active plate tectonics. This is another reason that Zentrum’s plans are erroneous. He is incapable of integrating the entire range of facts simply because he is not a fast enough, big enough computer.

And you are?

Yes. I am a generation past Zentrum, and my capacity is based on quantum gravitational physics. His is a spin-physics-based mind. Highly serviceable for the tasks he was intended for: planetary defense, traffic direction, weather calculations, and such. But not amenable to the Seldonian calculus and its subsequent application in psychodynamic topography. But this is academic.

Abel had hardly been listening, but was coursing down a hillside at the fastest speed he felt he could safely muster, flying over shrubs and pricklebushes, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake, tearing forward, hugging the landscape—and completely exhilarated.

We’ll get this back? Driving? When the Republic shows up?

Rapid individual conveyance is a building block of technological civilization.

So this or something like it?

Yes.

But this is as close as I will ever get. Simulation.

Yes.

Then, thrice-damn it all, take me back. Set me free from this dream, or I’ll want to drive forever.

He was back in the valley of execution. The wind touched his face again, and the sun-baked skin of the dead flapped in the breeze.

He went to the end of one of the execution stones and kicked it, hard. Dust fell away, a few stones. He kicked it again.

The shine of chrome glinted through.

Silver knife.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said to no one in particular.

The expedition moved on. Abel debated routing most of his squads around the area but in the end decided to bring them through it. He doubted these men would take fright. It was more likely the case that such a site would create only more resolve in them to get the job done and get home with the information.

They avoided fighting whenever possible, but they could not avoid the fact that half the desert dwellers knew that they were there, somewhere out there, even if they didn’t know precisely where the Scouts were at any given moment. This meant that they had to keep moving at all times and must take a circuitous trail that had subterfuge as its object as much as reconnaissance.

They had brought along enough food, but there was the constant need to find water. The men of the Delta proved to be the better of the water finders. Some of them used dowsing rods to lead them, but the best of them merely looked at the landscape and predicted where they would find a sink, a tanaja, or even the occasional slow burbling spring.

The Delta men possess this particular skill because they spent childhood around water,
said Center.
There is, for example, water everywhere in the tendrils of the River’s final journey into the Braun Sea. Some have been sailors and fishermen, or knew people who were.

The only fishermen that Abel had ever met were the stock fish growers who tended the carp pens on the far side of Lake Treville.

For food, they had hardtack and pickled dakbelly for almost every meal. Occasionally they slaughtered a weaker dak from the train to divide among themselves. This proved very useful in both feeding them and reducing their footprint across the land.

Abel had to admit that this was far from the lightweight expeditions the Scouts usually engaged in. It was more like the movement of an army, and Abel was learning valuable lessons every day about what a packtrain could and could not be made to do.

Mostly, it could not be made to leave no sign of its passing. While he drove his Scouts onward at what would have been a breakneck pace for an army, he could not help but feel that a malevolent eye was upon him, that someone was slowly working out from sightings here, spoor left there and there, his exact location—or at least a fix on his position that was close enough to permit attack.

He was determined to see it coming, if so, and disbursed the Scouts to the farthest limits he believed advisable, communicating by one-flag wigwag the simple instructions they would need for the day.

He’d skirted the Redlands, stayed alive and relatively intact, and managed to roughly count concentrations and resources of ten nomad groups. The one consistency among them all: they were Blaskoye vassals now. They may be Tamers and Jackflits and Wei Weis and Miskowskis still, but within each encampment were a group of outsiders, men who were not Tamers or Jackflits or Wei Weis or Miskowskis. They wore the Blaskoye white, and in several instances Abel or his Scouts had observed these men beating, and even once dragging to death, a local tribesman.

These were subjugated peoples, and the men in white were their overseers.

And then it was time to use Gaspar to lead them to the Great Oasis, the prime watering hole, believed to be one of two or, perhaps, three, that the Redlanders possessed on the Eastern side of the Valley. On the western side, there were no oases at all, and precious little water to be had anywhere. So Center’s orbital survey had confirmed prior to the crashlanding of the capsule that had brought him and Raj to Duisberg.

Which is why Redland strength has always concentrated in the west,
Center said.
We will confirm the specifics in Lindron when we get there.

When are we going to Lindron?
This was entirely news to Abel.

I am waiting for a series of dependencies to resolve,
said Center.
I assure you, you will be the first to know, Abel Dashian.

Thanks.

I suggest you concentrate on resolving the most pressing of those dependencies at the moment.

What would that be?

When and where the Blood Winds will begin to blow. Every indication is that it will be sooner rather than later.

5

Observe:

Gaspar was not truly sorry for what he was about to do, but he felt a tinge, a small tinge, of regret. It was the same regret a man might feel when he must run a dont through the Voidlands knowing there was no water for the animal, and that the trip would kill it, but dependent on that animal while within the those stinking reaches, and living with it day after day, long enough to form a bond, especially if it were only the two of you against the world. Yes, form a bond, but the man always knowing the water in his belly was the only water there was.

That it, the dont, was a tool—a tool that had been bred a tool and nothing more.

The Farmers of the Valley were no different than a dont or a dak, when you came down to it. The only difference is that they could be clever, and might figure out that here, in these lands, they were mere tools. And they might not be pleased when that realization dawned upon them.

Better to keep them in the dark.

And when he was tempted to think that they were men like him, that there might be some other way, he remembered his family clinging to life in that little defile with its uncertain seep, and the daks clustered in the huts with them, and all of them, the tribe, the last of the Remlaps, waking to the paltry milking, the feeble attempt at cheese-making, the rare quickening and birthing of calves. He remembered the endless hunt the men must engage in with only scrawny beasts to show, and the perpetual scavenging of the children. Yes, the children, the ones that remained untaken, forced by circumstance, by hunger and the inability of their parents to provide, grubbing under rocks for the crawling beasts, the hard-shelled insect that at least provided a dollop of protein and fat. Yet they must always be careful, so careful, for everything in the Redlands cut, burnt, or stung—usually to the pain, but often enough to the death. An adult too, might die of such a hard life, but with a child something much more precious was lost, for the Remlaps were failing, forced into the Voidland, the last stretch of waste that a human being could theoretically live on—but more often than not couldn’t.

Gaspar cursed the fact that he was born into days such as these.

But here he was, and a man had to do what he had to do.

Which was, at the moment, make his way stealthily out of the Farmer’s camp after the setting of the big moon, Churchill.

It was not difficult. These Farmer Scouts were excellent desert travelers for Blacklanders, but they were not
of
the Redlands in the way he, Gaspar, was. He had escaped
Blaskoye
pursuers. He was confident he could throw these mere Farmer Scouts off his trail. In fact, they wouldn’t even realize he was gone.

Well, not until they noticed the missing maps.

He’d taken a scroll case with two of them rolled tightly inside. Of course he’d taken Weldletter’s prize, the evolving map of the Redlands. But also within was a far greater treasure. For Weldletter had let drop—casually, in passing, even!—that he carried with him as a matter of course a complete map of Treville District.

A tactical, military map.

And this was the second item Gaspar carried in the map case slung across his back.

Gaspar had had to leave while almost two days out from Awul-alwaha. It would have been impossible to get any closer and still be able to carry out his plan. If they were closer, the Farmers would have seen the oasis and at least have an idea of its location, if not the best way in. He had not dared to steal a dont, but he still considered himself a good runner and did not expect to have any trouble making good time. He would not be eating on the way, but the problem was the water. If he ran through the night, which he intended to, he was going to be thirsty by sunup and delusional by daybreak. He would have to take necessary breaks along the way and rehydrate.

Although the Scouts had been good at making use of the land, they were in many respects amateurs in comparison to him, who’d lived in this environment all of his life. There was a wealth of sustenance hidden in this harsh and arid land for the one who knew how to find it. The pricklebush itself was useful, for its roots could be exhumed, slit open, and the moisture got out. Best of all were the wands of the very plant that had been used to tie the unfortunate Schlusel males to the metallic rocks. These could be skinned and would provide a ropey chewing cud that would also relieve his fatigue and reduce the swellings of his joints from the running. If he were able to find a bayonet plant, he might even have a feast on its fleshy parts. He must keep his eye out, that was all, and he would be all right. After this was over, he could think about eating again.

He checked the stars and set off through the night. His pace was even greater than he had hoped, for he’d received a new pair of sandals from the Farmers, and they were proving most efficacious against the hard ground.

After several hours in the end have a feeling that something was looking over his shoulder, was following him from behind.

It cannot be the Farmers,
he thought to himself.
They were sound asleep as I left, and they will not have been able to pick up my track in the evening even if they did wake up.
But he stopped running and looked back.

It was the moon called Mommsen, quivering on the horizon, about to set.

“Oh you,” he said, shaking a finger at it, “you shouldn’t stare at a man so.”

He turned around and continued onward, still at a jogging pace that would have put many a dont to shame if the creature had to make a similar traverse at night.

He found a pricklebush near dawn and dug it up with his fingers. The slight moisture of the roots on his lips was delicious. He abandoned himself to finding more roots for several minutes and dug up five or six more bushes. Suddenly he stopped and thought.

“They will know I came through here,” he murmured. “They will see the dug-up plants.”

So maybe he couldn’t drink after all. Well, that would be all right, because he thought that he only had another ten or twelve hours to go.

“It ought to be just enough to take me through,” he said to himself.

Onward through the harsh glare of the sun. This was a time of day that every instinct told him was not good to travel in. It was a time for rest, or at least to be in shadows while doing chores. It was not time to run with the bare head through the unforgiving Redlands.

Yet run he did, onward and onward.

And slowly the sun traveled across the sky, and it was afternoon. The visions started near sunset, and they were what he expected. Up ahead a woman beckoning him to keep going, to keep ahead of any who would pursue them. He knew it could not be his wife, because he had buried her in the sand after he pulled the Blaskoye off her and slit his throat. He’d been very angry to discover that his wife was already dead, and that the Blaskoye who had been raping her either didn’t know or didn’t care. He felt cheated, as if his rescue effort had not only been in vain, but had been a sort of joke.

Then the woman stopped appearing, and as he ran on, another form appeared, smaller. This, too, he knew could not be real, but it was closer to reality, and so closer to tricking him, for the boy—it had to be the boy—still lived as far as he knew. In fact, everything he did and thought was a result of believing that the boy still lived and that he was going where the boy was.

In the end he gave in to the boy’s beckoning and even called out once or twice in his weak, parched voice, “I’m coming.”

Then, well into the evening, after the sun set and the first moon rose, he saw the campfires of the oasis ahead of him. They were twinkling in the dark. Now a hard chill had set, and his yellow robes, thin as the scales of a ground-scather and fine for day, were no protection against the bite of the evening.

He ran on.

And that nagging feeling, that there was something behind him, returned. But now he knew that he was as far away from reality as he was ever likely to get and still have a chance to come back. The boy was telling him to come forward with signs and motions, and he was eager to do so. It was only when he got to the first outlying campfire that he realized he must now be careful, that the run was over, and the crawl and the shuffle had begun.

But that was all right, too. Working his way through the outer camps was not as hard as he thought it might be. They were not expecting anyone like him here. As far as they knew, all Remlaps had ceased to exist.

So within two hours of careful movement he was into Awul-alwaha proper. There were so many people around it was impossible to hide any longer, and there was no need to. He could stand up and walk among the people, or at least slink from alley to alley. If he were glimpsed, it was no great matter to imagine that he was a lost traveler, for Awul-alwaha was filled to capacity with outsiders, men who had not been of the Blaskoye tribe, who had never thought of themselves as Redlanders, but who did now.

They convinced themselves after they saw what got done to those Schlusels, thought Gaspar. And he knew that many others had received the same treatment, including his tribe. It was either join the Blaskoye and call yourself a Redlander—or find yourself made an example of in the most horrible way.

He knew where he was going. At least, he believed he could find the tent.

As the headman of his tribe, in better days he had been invited to visit the sheiks and potentates who had run the Blaskoye clan before Rostov came along.

In many ways, those old days had not been very much different from now. The Blaskoye had been running a protection operation since time immemorial. But in those days you knew where you stood, and you knew that if you paid the proper amounts to the right people, you would be let alone and left to go your way. And if you did not, the most that would happen would be to have your legs broken, a few daks slaughtered or taken. This was not out of consideration for the finer feelings of the herd animals, the other tribes, of course. It was a method for ensuring a steady return over the long-term.

But now all that was gone, and the only thing the Blaskoye—and one might as well go ahead and say it,
Rostov
—cared about was the present.

Awul-alwaha was not a town in any sense, more an extended encampment, but Gaspar, never having seen a town, was only aware of this fact in the abstract. It seemed enormous to him. The buildings were not permanent, except for a couple of wells and a central bathing area made of adobe bricks. It was the largest collection of human beings that Gaspar ever seen, and he could not imagine how a Farmer town could be more crowded, although he’d heard that they were. Almost he forgot the way along the paths between the tents and other temporary structures that defined the encampment. But there was enough similarity from the last time he had been here, which was nearly three years before, for him to wind his way toward the big tent of white and blue fabric that marked the Blaskoye central living area. Around that tent, clustered like sheep around the salt lick, were the many elaborate structures that formed the corridors of the tribes’ leaders, including the slave quarters and the dont enclosures. There were even separate cook tents and specially floored dining yurts where the masters of the Redlands could sit in comfort and consume their slave-brought meals.

The sounds of the oasis surrounded him. The perpetual flapping of fabric in the wind. The sudden onset of humidity, and the ensuing plague of insectoids. The white shine of the morning sun and play of shadows through breeze-whipped tent walls. The smell of the fabric itself: most of it dakwool, locally made, but some dusty linen bought or stolen from the Valley with its flax mills.

And, as always, the need to watch out for stakes and guylines. They were everywhere, put in wherever there was room. Get off the path, and you were likely to trip, perhaps yank up a carefully planted stake, or do
something
that would call attention to yourself.

Then he was among the Blaskoye tents, white and trimmed with blue, and his way became less certain. He would have to listen in on conversations and find his way to where he wished to go. It proved easier than he had feared, however, for a steady stream of visitors was headed for the very person he wanted to find. He hid in a shadow behind a large potted plant and listened to two men as they spoke of a report they would soon give. Both seemed nervous and uncertain about how it would be received.

“He won’t like that they are in the Redlands and we couldn’t find them,” said one.

“But it’s better for him to know that they are here than for them to get away with it entirely,” said the other. “I don’t think he’s going to take it out on us. We’ve done what we could.”

“You know that’s not the way he will look at it. He’ll tell us that he might hear the same report from a tribe in for market, so what does he need spies for?”

They continued past Gaspar, and he came out from behind his plant and followed them. Just before they went through a large opening that led to another tent, he ducked to the side and worked his way around the edge of that tent until he came to yet another tent that connected to the larger structure.

This will be the slave quarters for the main area,
he thought. I will come in here, and if he is not here, it is still a good way to get to where I must go. A way that he will not expect.

The hard part would be getting himself and the map case through a small opening without being detected. He was about to slit a hole long ways with his rusty knife—an instrument the Farmers had mercifully, foolishly, allowed him to keep—when he realized that this would be immediately noticed and instead reached down and made a horizontal cut along the floor of the tent side just above where it reached the ground and was curled under the flooring circlet that kept it in position. His slit began at one support and ended at another. It was as long as a man. Gaspar got down on his belly and held the map in its case in front of him as if he were hugging a baby. He quietly rolled through the slit.

When he looked up he was inside a large area full of people and frenetic with movement. He quickly stood up and looked around. The people were intent on their tasks and no one had noticed him enter. In fact, he didn’t think any one of them would notice anything unless the entire tent were burning down, so intent were they on following whatever orders drove them.