Page 18 (1/2)
Zek Continues Her Story
It was deep twilight now A few birds sang hushed, warbling songs in the grass of the plain; the ht flank, dark in their forested roots and gold on their snow-spiked peaks; the tribe of Lardis the Traveller le, the creaking of their caravans and rustle of travois to tell that they were there at all in the shadows of the woods where they skirted the barrierto the olves of the peaks, whose answering calls echoed doith an eerie foreboding The sun was a sliver of gold in the south, glea the coils of winding rivers
Only Michael J Simmons and Zekintha Foener spoke, because they were hell-landers and knew no better But even their speech was hushed It would soon be sundohich was not a tiers could sense that ht-framed travois; he hauled their kit bundled up in skins, carried only his SMG strapped across his back Zek helped as best she could where the going was rough, but in the e on his own In just a few days his trained physique had attained new heights of strength and endurance
A few miles back they’d picked up the main Traveller party and now Lardis’s tribe was complete Now, too, the sanctuary outcrop was only a short distance ahead; already its doreat, fleshless, yellowed skull in the middle distance From here on, as they went, the Gypsies would cover their tracks, leave no sign to tell that they’d co holes well enough, but even so they didn’t care to advertise their presence here
A few side Jazz and Zek, said: ’Jazz, when the tribe’s in and settled down, then meet me at the main entrance Myself and three or four of the lads, we’ll have a go at learning how to use these weapons of yours The flarenades?’ Jazz had paused for abrow
’Eh? Ah, yes!’ Lardis grinned ’But bigger fish next tirin had fallen from his face in a moment ’Let’s hope we don’t have to use them - any of them But if we do - the silver-tipped bolts of our crossbows, sharpened staves which we’ve got cached away in the caves, our swords of silver which are likewise hidden, coo, at least we’ll go fighting’
Then Zek had spoken up: ’That’s gloo you? We’ve just one more sundown ahead of us, and before the next one we’ll beup with the Dweller That’s what you proone well so far?’
He’d nodded ’So far, aye But the Lord Shaithis has a score to settle There was no bad blood before It was the old game of wolf and chicken, as always But now the chicken has clawed the wolf’s nose He’s not just curious or greedy any ry! Also - ’ and he’d closed his ed
Tell us the worst of it, Lardis,’ Jazz had urged hiain Lardis’s shrug ’I don’t know - s But there’s aI don’t like for a start!’ He’d pointed back the way they’d corey mist rolled down from the mountains, coiled itself shallowly on the forests It swirled and eddied, lapping like a slow tide over the foothills The Wamphyri have a ith mists,’ Lardis had continued ’We’re not the only ones who cover our tracks’
’But it’s still sunup!’ Jazz had protested
’In a very little while it will be sundown!’ Lardis had snapped ’And the great pass has been in darkness for a long time now Here in the lee of these forests, there’s shade aplenty’
Zek’s hand had flown to her ? But I’ve sensed nothing I’ve been scanning constantly but I’ve read no alien thoughts’
Lardis had breathed deeply, , anyway And if he is colanced up into the , and now they’ve stopped And our own animals are quiet, too See - only look at Wolf, there!’ Zek’s great wolf loped a little way apart; his ears were flat and his tail brushed the rough ground Every now and then he’d pause and look back, and whine a little
Jazz and Zek had looked at each other, then at Lardis ’But runted And with another shrug he’d gone on ahead
’What do you make of all that?’ Jazz now asked Zek, his tone soft
’I don’t know Maybe it’s just as he said Anyway, the closer we get to sundown, thenew in that The Travellers don’t likeelse is a bad sign The current s, that’s all’ For all her brave explanation, she hugged herself and shivered
’Ever the optimist?’ Jazz’s sh a lot,’ she was quick to answer ’And because we’re so close to the end now’
’Yes, you have been through a lot’ Jazz began hauling the travois again ’And co o
’We’ve been busy,’ she shrugged ’Do you still want to hear it?’ Suddenly the idea appealed to her Maybe talking would calm her own nerves a little
’Yes,’ Jazz said, ’but first there are a couple of other things that have been bothering me’
’Oh?’
’Anachronise tongue of theirs, theirUnless there’s a lot of this planet I don’t know about -and I can’t see how that can be, for one side’s hot enough to fry eggs and the other would freeze you stiff - then these things I’ve mentioned are anachronisms This world iswell, it’s pris in this worldby coh-tech!’
Zek’s turn to nod ’I know,’ she said, ’and I’ve thought about it If you talk to the Travellers about their history, their legends, as I have done, youto immemorial sources, their world wasn’t always like this Waends bear the Traveller myths out, incidentally’
Jazz was interested ’Go on,’ he said ’You talk and I’ll save ends have it that once upon a tiion, with oceans, ice-caps, jungles and plains: much like Earth; in fact And it teemed with people Oh, it had its vampire swamps, too, but they weren’t so active in those days People knew about them and shunned them; local co was ever allowed out Va that if a man was ever vampirized they didn’t attempt a cure There is no cure So they’d sioes
’But in the main the vampires were kept down, and in those days there were no Wa to fear and so nothing to run from; their systems were mainly barter, less frequently feudal
’Anyway, as far as I can make out they weredifferences, of course: they hadn’t discovered gunpowder, for one thing Also, while they’d developed a coet it down on paper - or on skins That’s why eneration to the next Of course, you can get big distortions that way: soerated while others of real importance are lost entirely For exaiants, who eat vaet a sto skills, designed the first caravan, made the first crossbow
’So that was the way this world was: like ours o, but in erous, less warlike, less noisy Mainly people lived in peace with each other, and apart from small territorial disputes they were left alone to fared to produce There have been plenty of worse places, and worse times, in our oorld
’Oh, and perhaps I should one tihts, again pretty si happened
’According to the Traveller legend, a "white sun" appeared in the night sky It cah the heavens so fast it looked like a bar of fire; it glanced off the moon, speared down and blazed across the surface of the world! As it fell so it shrank, until finally it skie ball of fire, like a flat stone bouncing on water, and cah it was sic was enored the world’s axis, brought into being geological stresses of awesonitude It created these mountains, the frozen lands to the north, the deserts of the south And for a thousand years after its co, the surface of this world was more like hell than the friendly place it had been
The seasons were gone forever, the moon was now a demon flyer that called to the wolves, an estimated quarter-billion people were reduced to a few thousand The continents had changed, mountains disappeared from where they’d been, were forced up elsewhere; the survivors went through a nightmare of tidal waves, storms, volcanic upheavals - you name it But they learned to live with it, and eventually the world settled down Except that now there was a Starside and a Sunside
’Centuries passed Who kno many? Far Sunside became a desert, and Starside well, you’ve seen it Only the mountains and their Sunside foothills could support human life as we know it People had settled there, started to rebuild, however slowly, crudely They remembered a few of their skills, used theed, had re-stocked with evil vampiric life
’Explorers went over the h the passes, saw the frozen wastes beyond Torrential rains, the howling elehty stacks from the mountain flanks, but the land was all but barren Men couldn’t live there Men, ue of vas They infested men and animals in unprecedented nu by night and crawling into holes during the interery by Nature’s disaster, now this un-natural disaster reduced people further still Then the tribes rallied, began hunting vampires, killed them as they had in the old days They used the stake, the sword, fire; they dragged va into the open, pinned theain; the swaue was under control But vareat pass Long-lived, they fought with each other for the blood which sustains thelodytes in their deep caverns on Starside Then, as they started to inhabit the stacks, so they became the "Lords" of that dark hemisphere They built their aeries, called theence of men and the drive of the vaan to raid on Sunside The people they victi Travellers, and they’re still travelling That’s the whole story
’This "white sun",’ Jazz said after a while ’Are we talking about the sphere - the Gate - whatever?’
Zek shrugged ’I iht? Not only a distortion of space but a bridge across time, too Is it possible that what appeared here thousands of years ago was caused by the Perchorsk accident, and that the two are linked through the sphere? An anachronism, as you say’
’But what the hell was - is - it?’ Jazz frowned ’Back at Perchorsk there was talk of black, white, even grey holes And you said it tied in with Waends have it that the "white sun" came from hell - or a place that was hell to the sun was a constant factor, a regularly recurring nightmare from which there was only brief surcease Up until a tih from Perchorsk out onto the plain of boulders on Starside was buried It used to lie at the bottom of its crater, where only its upper surface was visible, beaht It was maybe fifteen to twenty feet deep, surrounded by the crater wall I had all of this froo our time - ’
’At the time of the Perchorsk accident?’ Jazz was quick to note
’Yes,’ Zek nodded, ’I suppose so Anyway, that hen a change took place During sunup, when the Wamphyri stick close to their stacks, the sphere apparently elevated itself up from the bed of its crater until it was positioned as it is now’
’Explanation?’
Zek’s shrug ’I certainly don’t have one But the Wae in the sphere - the gate to the hell-lands - is portentous of great changes in general Changes they theate’
’Such as?’
’Well, for a long ti war on the Dweller If they could put aside their own petty squabbles long enough, e in ourselves When Chingiz Khuv started sending political prisoners and other "undesirables" through the Gate as a series of experimentsit was the first time that the Wamphyri had proof that the hitherto half-, chewing his lip ’So here,’ he said ’If the recent Perchorsk accident in our world caused the "white sun" effect thousands of years ago in this one, why didn’t we appear through the Gate all that tio? Another anachronism? A space-ti true Now tellthe Gate as a punishh it?’
Zek glanced at hiht’
’Well, as far as I’h their history, for thousands of years’
’See what I mean?’ Jazz was sure this was important ’Up until the time I left Perchorsk there had only been a handful of "encounters" - of which only one was, or had been, a man A creature of the Wamphyri, anyway’
Zek shook her head ’No, he was true Wamphyri, that one He was Lesk the Glut’s heir, Klaus Desculu He had Lesk’s egg, but instead of going off and finding or stealing a stack of his own, he tried to usurp his father, Lesk The Glut is insane; even the Wanize that fact, that Lesk the Glut is not responsible His passions are enorht Klaus to heel, punished him for ten years - subh the Gate He was the one they hosed with liquid fire on the ay But I see what youtheir hout their history, where have they been going? Not to Perchorsk, obviously, for Perchorsk didn’t exist then’
’Co this way,’ Jazz mused, ’from Perchorsk to here, there’s only one exit - onto the boulder plain on Starside But going the other wayis there more than one exit into our world? One at Perchorsk and another somewhere else?’
It was Zek’s turn to be excited ’I’ve wondered about that,’ she said ’And it s which have puzzled me - and you’
’Oh?’
She nodded ’For instance, how is it that the Traveller tongue is so close to the Romanian of our world? And for that matter, how are the Gypsies thees, Jazz? Our Earth, of course? It’s obvious that you’re souist’
He ses? Quite a lot, actually I have qualifications in Russian My father was a Russian The Slavonic languages, yes, and soues, too That’s how I picked up the Traveller patois so quickly Why do you ask?’
’A theory of es coes are easy if you’ve a rapport with your subject’s ue and Romanian seemed so obvious to ue’
Jazz sahat she was getting at and drew breath in a hiss ’The banished Wae with them into our world!’ he said ’Zek, that’s clever! But - ’
’Yes?’
’But that’s to suppose that the Latin tongues originated here, not in our world’
That’s my theory, yes I also believe that some of those ancient, banished Waaro, Zigeuner: the Gypsy!’
’The Roues spread outwards from Russia?’ Jazz looked puzzled ’I can’t see that’
’Who mentioned Russia?’ she answered ’If there is more than one exit in our world, why must they all be in Russia?’
’Romania?’
’That would be end arise from in our world? Where does it have its roots?’
’In Romania, of course’