To Die In Italbar Page 5

  He ate slowly, and the owner of the store came back and wanted to talk. Where was he going with that pack and those rations?

  Camping, tip in the hills, he explained. Why? He was about to tell the old man it was none of his affair, when it occurred to him that perhaps he was lonely. Neither the store nor the dining room looked as if they drew much business. Possibly the man did not see many people. And he was old.

  So Heidel made up a story. The man listened to it, nodding. Soon Heidel was listening and the storekeeper was doing all the talking. Heidel nodded occasionally.

  He finished his meal and lit a cigar.

  Gradually, as the time wore on, Heidel realized that he was enjoying the man's company. He ordered another brew. Finishing his cigar, he lit a second one.

  Because there were no windows, he did not see the long shadows begin. He spoke of other worlds; he showed the man his stones. The man told him of the farm he once had owned.

  As the first stars of evening gave their light to tile world, Heidel glanced at his chrono.

  "It can't be _that_ late!" he said.

  The old man looked at Heidel's, looked at his own.

  "I'm afraid that it is. I didn't mean to keep you if you were in a hurry ..."

  "No. That's all right," said Heidel. "I just didn't realize what time it was getting to be. I've enjoyed talking with you. But I'd better be going now."

  He paid his bill and departed quickly. He was not eager to push his safety margin.

  He turned right when he left the store, walking through the twilight, heading in the direction from which he had originally come. After fifteen minutes, he was out of the business district and passing through a pleasant residential section of the city. The globes glowed more brightly atop their poles as the sky darkened and stars were splashed across it.

  Passing a stone church, a faint light coming from behind its stained glassite windows, he felt that old jittery sensation that churches always gave him. It had been--what?--ten or twelve years ago? Whatever the interval, he recalled the event clearly. It still troubled him on occasion.

  It had been a stifling summer day on Murtania and he had been caught out in the noonday heat, walking. He had sought refuge in one of those underground Strantrian shrines, where it is always cool and dark. Seating himself in an especially shadowy corner, he had rested. He closed his eyes when two worshipers appeared, hoping to appear appropriately contemplative. The newcomers, instead of praying quietly as he had expected, did not seat themselves, but commenced an exchange of excited whispers. One of them departed, and the other moved forward and took a seat near to the central altar. Heidel studied him. He was a Murtanian, and his branchial membranes were swollen and flared, which indicated excitement. His head was not bowed; instead, he was staring upward. Heidel followed the direction of his gaze, and saw that he was looking at that row of giassite illustrations which formed a continuous band of deities, passing along all the walls of the chapel. The man was staring at the one among all those illustrations which was now glowing with a blue fire. When his own eyes fell upon it, Heidel felt something akin to an electric shock. Then his extremities tingled and there came a feeling of dizziness. Not one of the old diseases acting up, he hoped. But no, it did not behave that way. Instead, there was a strange exhilaration, like the first stages of drunkenness, though he had had nothing alcoholic to drink that day. Then the place began to fill with worshipers. Almost before he realized it, there was a service being conducted. The feeling of exhilaration and power began to heighten, and then specific emotions appeared--oddly contradictory emotions. One moment, he wanted to reach out and touch the people about him, call them "brother," love them, heal them of their ills; the next moment, he hated them and wished that he had not just undergone catharsis, so that he might infect the entire congregation with some fatal disease that would spread like flames in a pooi of gasoline and kill them all in a day. His mind cycled back and forth between these desires and he wondered if he were going mad. He had never exhibited schizophrenic tendencies before, and his feelings toward humanity had never been characterized by either extreme. He had always been an easygoing individual who neither gave trouble nor sought it. He had neither loved nor hated his fellows, but took them as they were and moved among them as best he could. Consequently, he was at a total loss to understand the mad desires that suddenly possessed him. He waited for the latest wave of hatred to pass, and when the lull came before the next upswing of amity, he rose quickly and pushed his way to the door. By the time he reached it, he was well into the other phase and he apologized to everyone he jostled. "Peace, brother. I crave your pardon. --Forgive me, for I love you. --I apologize with all my heart. --Excuse my unworthy passage, please." Once he made it through the door, up the steps and onto the street, he ran. Within a few minutes, all unusual feelings had departed. He had considered consulting a psychiatrist, but refrained because he later explained it to himself as a reaction to the heat, followed by the sudden coolness, in combination with all the little side effects that come of visiting a new planet. Then, too, there was never a recurrence of the phenomenon. From that day on, however, he had never set foot in a church of any sort; nor could he pass one without a certain feeling of apprehension which he traced back to that day on Murtania.

  He paused at a corner to let three vehicles pass. While waiting, he heard a sound at his back.

  "Mr. H!"

  A boy of about twelve emerged from the shadows beneath a tree and advanced toward him. In his left hand he held a black leash, the other end of which was clipped to the collar of a green meter-long lizard with short, bowed legs. Its claws clicked on the pavement as it waddled after the boy, and when it opened its mouth to dart its red tongue in his direction, it seemed as if it were grinning. It was a very fat lizard, and it rubbed against the boy's leg several times as he approached.

  "Mr. H, I went to the hospital to see you earlier, but you had to go back inside, so I only got a glimpse. I heard about how you healed Luci Dorn. It sure is lucky meeting you, just walking along."

  "Don't touch me!" said Heidel; but the boy had clasped his hand too quickly and was looking up at him with eyes in which the stars danced.

  Heidel dropped his hand and backed off several paces.

  "Don't get too close," he said. "I think I'm catching a cold."

  "Then you shouldn't be out in this night air. I'll bet my folks would put you up."

  "Thanks, but I have an appointment."

  "This is my _larick_." He tugged on the leash. "His name is Chan. Sit up, Chan."

  The lizard opened its mouth, squatted, curled into a ball.

  "He doesn't always do it. Not when he doesn't feel like it, anyway," the boy explained. "When he wants to, though, he's real good at it. He stabilizes himself with his tail. --Come on, Chan! Sit up for Mr. H."

  He yanked on the leash.

  "That's all right, son," said Heidel. "Maybe he's tired. --Look, I have to be going. Maybe I'll meet you again before I leave town. Okay?"

  "Okay. Sure glad I got to meet you. G'night."

  "Good night."

  Heidel crossed the street and hurried on.

  A vehicle drew up beside him.

  "Hey! You're Dr. H, aren't you?" a man called.

  He turned.

  "That's right."

  "I thought I saw you at the corner back that way. Went round the block so I could get a good look."

  Heidel drew back, away from the vehicle.

  "Can I give you a lift to wherever you're going?"

  "No thanks. I'm almost there."

  "You're sure now?"

  "Positive. I appreciate the offer."

  "Well, okay. --My name's Wiley."

  The man extended his hand out through the window.

  "I have grease on my hand. I'll get you dirty," said Heidel; and the man leaned forward, seized his left hand, squeezed it briefly, then drew back into the car.

  "Okay. Take it easy, then," he said, and he drove off.

&nb
sp; Heidel felt like screaming at the world, telling it to go away and stop touching him.

  He ran for the next two blocks. Minutes later, another vehicle slowed when its lights fell upon him, but he averted his face and it passed him by. A man sitting on a porch smoking a pipe waved at him and rose to his feet. He said something, but Heidel ran again and did not hear the words.

  Finally, there were greater open spaces between dwellings. Soon the aisle of glow-globes ceased and the stars took on a greater prominence. When the road ended, he continued along the trail, the bulk of the hills now blocking half his prospect.

  He did not look back at Italbar as he mounted above it.

  * * *

  Leaning far forward, her knees pressed hard against the plated sides of tile eight-legged kooryab she rode, black hair streaming in the wind, Jackara raced through the hills above Capeville. Far below and to her left, the city crouched beneath its morning umbrella of fog. From over her right shoulder, the risen sun cast shafts down into the mist and made it sparkle.

  There, the tall buildings of the city, all of silver, their countless windows taking white fire like gems, the sea beyond them something between purple and blue, clouds like one giant, frothing tidal wave, massed at the city's unguarded back, touched with pink and orange at its crest, there, halfway up the sky, ready to topple through the blue air and shave the entire peninsula from the continent, sinking it full fathom five, to lie forever dead at the ocean's bottom, becoming over the ages the lost Atlantis of Deiba, she dreamed.

  Riding, clad in slacks and a short white tunic belted with red, a matching red headband keeping that fluttering hair from her bright blue eyes, Jackara cursed with the foulest oaths of all the races she had known.

  Turning her mount and drawing it to a halt, so that it reared and hissed before it settled panting, she glared down at the city.

  "Burn, damn you! Burn!"

  But no flames leaped to do her bidding.

  She drew her unregistered laser pistol from a holster beneath her garment and triggered it to cut through the trunk of a small tree. The tree stood for a moment, swayed, then fell with a crash that dislodged pebbles and sent them rolling down the hill. The _kooryab_ started at this, but she controlled it with her knees and a soft word.

  Reholstering her pistol, she continued to stare at the city, and unspoken curses were there in her eyes.

  It was not just Capeville and the brothel in which she worked. No. It was the whole of the CL that she hated, hated with a passion only exceeded perhaps by that of one other being. Let the other girls visit the churches of their choice on this, a holiday. Let them eat candy and grow fat. Let them entertain their true loves. Jackara rode the hills and practiced with her gun.

  One day--and she hoped that that day came during her lifetime--there _would_ be fire, and blood and death within the blazing hearts of bombs and rockets. She kept herself as prepared as a bride for that day. When it came, she desired only the opportunity to die in its name, killing something for it.

  She had been very young--four or five, she'd guessed-- when her parents had emigrated to Deiba. When the conflict had begun, they had been confined to a Relocation Center because of the planet of their origin. If she ever had the money, she would go back. But she knew that she would never have it. Her parents did not live out the duration of the conflict between the Combined Leagues and the DYNAB. Afterward, she had become a ward of the state. She learned that the old stigma remained, also, when she came of age and sought employment. Only the stateoperated pleasure house in Capeville was open to her. She had never had a suitor, or even a boy friend; she had never held a different job. "Possible DYNAB Sympathizer" was stamped on a file, in red, somewhere, she felt, and in it, probably, her life history, neatly typed, double-spaced, filling half a sheet of official stationery.

  Very well, she had decided, years before, when she had sorted through the facts and achieved this conclusion. Very well. You picked me up, you looked at me, you threw me away. You gave me a name, unwanted. I will take it, removing only the "Possible." When the time comes, I will indeed be a canker at this flower's heart.

  The other girls seldom entered her room, for it made them uneasy. On the few occasions when they did, they would giggle nervously, depart quickly. No lace and ruffles, no tridee photos of handsome actors, such as adorned their rooms--none of these occupied the austere cell that was Jackara's. Above her bed was only the lean, scowling countenance of Malacar the avenger, the last man on Earth. On the opposite wall hung a pair of matched whips with silver handles. Let the other girls deal with ordinary customers. She wanted only those she could abuse. And these were given to her, and she abused them, and they kept returning for more. And every night she would speak to him, in the closest thing in her life to prayer: "I have beaten them, Malacar, as you have struck down their cities, their worlds, as you still strike, as you shall strike again. Help me to be strong, Malacar. Give me the power to hurt, to destroy. Help me, Malacar. Please help me. Kill them!" And sometimes, late at night or in the early hours of morning, she would wake up crying and not know why.

  She turned her mount and headed toward the trail that led through the hills toward the other shore of the peninsula. The day was young and her heart was light, filled as it was with the recent news of Blanchen.

  * * *

  Heidel drank one full canteen of water and half of another. The damp, past-midnight darkness lay upon his camp. He turned onto his back and clasped his hands behind his head, staring up into the heavens. Everything recent seemed so far past. Each time that he awakened from the thing it was as if he were beginning a new life, the events of previous days seeming for a time as cold and flat as a year-old letter discovered behind the waste container it had missed. This feeling would pass in an hour or so, he knew.

  A shooting star crossed the bright heavens and he smiled. Harbinger of my final day on Cleech, he told himself.

  He consulted his gleaming chrono once again, confirming the time. Yes, his sleep-filled eyes had not misread it. Hours still remained before the dawn.

  He rubbed his eyes and thought back upon her beauty. She had seemed so very quiet this time. Though he seldom remembered the words, it seemed that there had been fewer of them. Was it sadness that had marked the tenderness? He recalled a hand upon his brow and something moist that fell onto his cheek.

  He shook his head and chuckled. Was he indeed mad, as he had expected lives ago, back in that Strantrian shrine? To consider her as a real person was an act of madness.

  On the one hand ...

  On the other... How do you explain a recurring dream, anyway? One that persists over a decade? Not the dream, exactly, though. Only the principals and the setting. The dialogue changed, the moods shifted. But each time he was taken with a sense of love and strength into a place of peace. Perhaps he should have seen a psychiatrist. If he had wanted to straighten himself out, that is. But he did not, he decided. Not really. Alone most of the time, who was there for him to harm? Awake when he dealt with others, he was not influenced by them. They gave him comfort and distraction. Why destroy one of the harmless pleasures of life? There seemed no progressive derangement involved.

  So he lay there for several hours. He thought about the future. He watched the sky grow light, and one by one he saw the stars put away. He was curious as to the happenings on other worlds. It had been a long while that he had been away from News Central.

  When dawn broke the world in two, he rose, sponged himself, trimmed his hair and beard, dressed. He breakfasted, packed his belongings, stowed his pack on his back and started downhill.

  Half an hour later, he was passing through the outskirts of town.

  As he crossed a street, he heard a bell tolling the same note over and over.

  Death, he said; a funeral. And he passed on.

  Then he heard sirens. But he continued on, not seeking their source.

  He came to the store where he had taken a meal several days earlier. It was closed, and there
was a dark remembrance set upon the door.

  He walked on, suddenly fearing the worst, knowing it.

  He waited for a procession to pass the corner where he stood. A hearse rumbled by, lights on.

  They still bury the dead here, he reflected; and, Not what I think, he told himself. Just a death, an ordinary death ... Who am I trying to fool?

  He walked on, and a man crossed his path and spat upon it.

  Again? What have I become?

  He walked the streets, wending his slow way to the airfield.

  If I am responsible, how can they know so soon? he asked himself.

  They cannot, not for sure ...

  But then he thought of himself as they knew him. What? A god-touched being dropped into their midst. Mutual apprehension would prevail, along with the awe. He had stayed too long, that day, centuries ago. Now every moment's pleasure was refined, drained, siphoned, lessened by each bellnote. Every new moment here was closed to pleasure.

  He moved along the street, cutting toward his right.

  A young boy drew attention to him: "There he is!" he cried. "That's H!"

  He could not deny it--but the tone made him wish he were catching his air car elsewhere.