Isle Of The Dead Read online

  I had the edge on Green Green, I felt, because it was my world he'd chosen for the encounter. How long he'd had to fool around with it, of course, was a thing I didn't know and a thing that worried me. What changes had he effected? He'd chosen the perfect bait. How perfect was the trap? How much of an edge did he think he had? Whatever, he couldn't be sure of anything, not against another Name. Nor, of course, could I.

  Did you ever witness the combat of _betta splendens_, the Siamese Fighting Fish? It's not like a cock fight or a dog fight or a cobra-mongoose match, or anything else in the world but itself. You place two males in the same bowl. They move together quickly, unfurling their brilliant fins, like red, blue, green shadows, expanding their branchial membranes. This gives the illusion of their suddenly blooming into something larger than they had been. Then they approach one another slowly, remain side by side for perhaps a quarter of a minute, drifting. Then they move, so fast that the eye can't even follow what is happening. Then, slow and peaceful again, they drift. Then suddenly, the colored whirlagig. Then drifting. Then movement. This pattern continues. The colored-shadow fins. And even this may be misleading. After a time, a reddish haze will surround them. Another flurry. They slow. Their jaws are locked. A minute passes, perhaps two. One opens his jaws and swims away. The other drifts.

  This is how I saw what was to come.

  I passed the moon, the dark bulk of the world grew before me, occluding stars. As I neared it, my descent slowed. Devices beneath the cockpit were activated, and when I finally entered the upper atmosphere I was already drifting, slowly. The impression of moonlight on a hundred lakes: coins at a dark pool's bottom.

  I monitored for artificial light, detected none. Flopsus appeared upon the horizon, adding her light to her sister's. After perhaps half an hour, I could make out the more prominent features of the continent. I combined these with memory and feeling and began to steer the sled.

  Like the falling of a leaf on a still day, tacking, sideslipping, I headed for the ground. The lake called Acheron, with its Isle of the Dead, lay, I calculated, some six hundred miles to the northwest.

  Far below me, clouds appeared. I drifted on and they were gone. I lost very little altitude during the next half-hour and gained perhaps forty miles on my goal. I wondered what detection devices might be functioning below me.

  The high-altitude winds caught me, and I fought them for a time; finally, though, I had to descend several thousand feet to escape the worst of them.

  For the next several hours I made my way, steadily, north and west. At a height of some fifty thousand feet, I was still over four hundred miles from my goal. I wondered what detection devices might be functioning below me.

  Within the next hour, though, I descended twenty thousand feet and gained about seventy miles. Things seemed to be breaking nicely.

  Finally, a false dawn began in the east, and I dropped a mile to get beneath it. My speed increased as I did so. It was like descending into an ocean, light water to dark.

  But the light followed me. After a time, I ran again. I plowed through a cloudbank, estimated my position, continued to descend. How many miles to Acheron?

  Two hundred, perhaps.

  The light caught me, passed me, went away.

  I dropped to fifteen thousand feet, picked up forty miles. I deactivated several more plates.

  I was cruising at three thousand feet when the real dawn began to occur.

  I continued for ten minutes, dropping, found a clear place and went to ground.

  The sun cracked open the east, and I was a hundred miles from Acheron, give or take around ten. I opened the bubble, pulled the destruct-cord, leapt to the ground and ran.

  A minute later, the sled collapsed upon itself and began to smolder. I slowed to a walk, took my bearings, headed across the field toward the place where the trees began.

  V

  During the first five minutes Illyria returned to me, and it was as if I had never been gone. Filtered through the forest's mists, the sunlight came rose and amber; dewdrops glistened on the leaves and the grasses; the air was cool, smelled of damp earth and decomposing vegetation, which is sweet. A small yellow bird circled my head, lighted on my shoulder, perched there for a dozen paces, was gone. I stopped to cut myself a walking stick, and the smell of the white wood took me back to Ohio and the creek where I'd cut willows to fashion whistles, soaking the wands overnight, tapping the bark with the handle of my knife to loosen it, near the place where the strawberries grew. And I found some wild berries, huge and purple, crushed them between my fingers and licked the juice, which was tart. A crested lizard, bright as a tomato, stirred sluggishly atop his rock and moved to sit on the toe of my boot as I was doing this. I touched his crown, then pushed him away and moved on. When I looked back, his salt-and-pepper eyes met my own. I walked beneath forty- and fifty-foot trees, and moisture occasionally dripped down upon me. Birds began to awaken, and insects. A big-bellied green whistler began his ten-minute song of deflation on a limb above me. Somewhere to my left, a friend or relative joined in. Six purple _cobra de capella_ flowers exploded from the ground and emitted hisses as they swayed upon their stalks, their petals rippling like flags, their heavy perfumes released with bomb-like efficiency. But I wasn't startled, for it was as if I had never gone away.

  I walked on and the grasses diminished. The trees were larger now, ranging from fifty to seventy feet, with numerous boulders lying among them. A good place for an ambush; likewise, a good place to take cover from one.

  The shadows were deep, and para-monkeys chanted overhead while a legion of clouds advanced from the west. The low sun tickled their quarters with flame, shot shafts of light through the leaves. Vines that clung to some of the giants held blossoms like silver candelabra, and the air about them hinted of temples and incense. I forded a pearly stream and crested water snakes swam beside me, hooting like owls. They were quite poisonous, hut very friendly.

  From the other bank, the ground began to slope upward, gently at first; and, as I advanced, some subtle change seemed to come over the world. There was nothing objective to which I could relate it, only a feeling that the decks of order had been slightly riffled.

  The coolness of morning and the wood did not depart as the day advanced. Rather, it seemed to deepen. There was a definite chill in the air; and later it became an almost clammy feeling. Still, the sky was more than half-filled with clouds by then, and the ionization that precedes a storm often gives rise to such feelings.

  When I stopped to eat, sitting with my back against the bole of an ancient mark-tree, I frightened a pandrilla who had been digging among its roots. As soon as he began to flee, I knew that something was wrong.

  I filled my mind with the desire that he return, and laid it upon him.

  He halted then in his flight and turned and regarded me. Slowly, he approached. I fed him a cracker and tried to see through his eyes as he ate it.

  Fear, recognition, fear ... There had been a moment of misplaced panic.

  It didn't belong.

  I released him and he remained, content to eat my crackers. His initial response had been too unusual to dismiss, however. I feared what it indicated.

  I was entering enemy territory.

  I finished eating and moved on. I descended into a foggy vale, and when I left it the mists were still with me. The sky was almost completely overcast. Small animals fled before me, and I made no effort to change their minds. I walked on, and my breath was white, moist wings now. I avoided two power-pulls. If I were to use one, it could betray my position to another sensitive.

  What is a power-pull? Well, it's a part of the makeup of everything with an electromagnetic field. Every world has numerous, shifting points in its gravitational matrix. There, certain machines or specially talented people can plug in and act as switchboards, batteries, conderisors. Power-pull is a handy term for such a nexus of energy, a term used by people who can employ it in such a fashion. I didn't want to use one until I was cer
tain as to the nature of the enemy, however, for all Namebearers normally possess this capability.

  So I let the fog dampen my garments and take the sheen from my boottops, when I could have dried out. I walked with my staff in my left hand, my right one free to draw and fire.

  Nothing attacked me, though, as I advanced. In fact, after a time no living thing crossed my path.

  I hiked until evening, making perhaps twenty miles that day. The dampness was all-pervasive, but there was no rain. I located a small cave in the foothills I was then negotiating, cast my flimsy--a ten by ten sheet of tough plastic material, three molecules in thickness--for insulation against the dirt and some of the dampness, ate a dry meal and slept, my gun near my hand.

  * * *

  The morning was as bleak as the night and the day before, and the fog had thickened. I suspected an intent behind it, and I moved cautiously. It struck me as just a bit too melodramatic. If he thought he was going to shake me up with shadow, mist, chill and the alienation of a few of my creatures, he was wrong. Discomfort just irritates me, makes me angry and fixes my determination to get at its source and deal with it as quickly as possible.

  I slopped my way through much of the second day, topped the hills and began my downward trek. It was along about evening that I picked up a companion.

  A light appeared off to my left and moved parallel to my own course. It hovered anywhere from two to eight feet above the ground, and its color varied from pale yellow through orange to white. It could have been anywhere from twenty to a hundred feet away at any given time. Occasionally, it disappeared; always, it returned. A will-o-the-wisp, sent to lure me into some crevass or marshy bog? Probably. Still, I was curious, I admired its persistence--and it was nice to have company.

  "Good evening," I said. "I'm coming to kill whoever sent you, you know.

  "But then you might just be marsh gas," I added. "In which case, you may dismiss my last remark.

  "Either way," I went on, "I'm not in the mood to be led astray just now. You can take a coffee break if you'd like."

  Then I began whistling _It's a Long Way to Tipperary_. The thing continued to pace me. I stopped and sheltered beneath a tree, to light a cigarette. I stood there and smoked it. The light hovered about fifty feet away, as if waiting. I tried to touch it with my mind, but it was as if there was nothing there. I drew my gun and thought better of it, reholstered it. I finished my cigarette, crushed it out, moved ahead.

  Again, the light moved with me.

  About an hour later, I made camp in a small clearing. I wrapped myself in my flimsy, my back against a rock. I built a small fire and heated some soup I'd brought along. The light wouldn't carry far on a night like this.

  The will-o-the-wisp hovered just outside the circle of firelight. "Care for a cup of coffee?" I asked it. There was no reply, which was a good thing. I had only one cup with me.

  After I'd finished eating, I lit a cigar and let the fire go down to embers. I puffed my cigar and wished for stars. The night was soundless about me, and the chill was reaching for my backbone. It had already seized my toes and was gnawing on them. I wished I'd thought to bring a flask of brandy.

  My fellow traveler stood vigil, unmoving, and I stared back at him. If it wasn't a natural phenomenon, it was there to spy on me. Dared I sleep? I dared.

  When I awoke, my chrono showed me that an hour and a quarter had passed. Nothing had changed. Not forty minutes later, either, nor two hours and ten minutes after that, when I awoke again.

  I slept out the rest of the night and found it waiting in the morning.

  This day was like the previous one, cold and blank. I broke camp and moved on, reckoning that I was about a third of the way to my destination.

  Suddenly, there was a new development. My companion moved from my left and drifted slowly ahead. It turned right then and hovered, about sixty feet before me. By the time I reached that spot, it had moved on, anticipating my path.

  That was a thing I didn't like. It was as though the guiding intelligence were mocking me, saying, "Look here, old boy, I know where you're headed and how you intend getting there. Why don't you let me make the way a bit easier?" It was a successful mock, too, for it made me feel like a complete fool. There were several things I could do about it, but I didn't feel like doing them yet.

  So I followed. I followed till lunchtime, when it politely halted until I was quite finished; till dinnertime, when it did the same.

  Shortly thereafter, however, the light again changed its behavior. It drifted off to the left and vanished. I stopped and stood still for a moment, for I'd grown used to it. Was I supposed to have become so conditioned to following it all day that fatigue and habit would combine to lead me after it now, off my intended path? Perhaps.

  I wondered how far it would lead me if I gave it the opportunity.

  I decided that twenty minutes of walking after it would be quite enough. I loosened my pistol in its holster and waited for it to come again.

  It did. When it repeated its previous performances, I turned and followed. It hurried ahead, waited for me to catch up, hurried on.

  After about five minutes, a light rain began to fall. Though the darkness deepened, I could see without using my hand torch. Soon I was soaked all the way through. I cursed and sloughed along, shivering.

  Approximately half a mile further along, wetter, colder, darker the day, stronger still the feeling of alienation, I was left alone. The light went out. I waited, but it did not return.

  Carefully, I made my way to the place where I had last seen it, circling in from the right, gun in hand, searching with my eyes and my mind.

  I brushed against a dry tree-limb and heard it snap.

  "Stop! For the love of God! Don't!"

  I threw myself to the ground and rolled.

  The cry had come from right beside me. I covered that area from a distance of twelve feet.

  Cry? Had it been a truly physical sound, or something within my mind? I wasn't certain.

  I waited.

  Then, so softly that I wasn't certain how I was hearing it, there came to me a sound of sobbing. Soft sounds are difficult to pinpoint, and this was no exception. I turned my head slowly, from right to left, saw no one.

  "Who is it?" I asked in a shrill whisper, for these, too, are without direction.

  No answer. But the sobbing continued. Reaching out with my mind, I felt pain and confusion, nothing more.

  "Who is it?" I repeated.

  There was silence, then, "Frank?" said the voice.

  This time I decided to wait. I let a minute go by, then said my name.

  "Help me," came the reply.

  "Who are you? Where are you?"

  "Here ..."

  And the answers came into my mind, and the nape of my neck crawled and my hand tightened on the pistol.

  "Dango! The Capel Knife!"

  I knew then what had happened, but I didn't have guts enough to turn on my torch and take a good look. I didn't need to, though.

  My will-o-the-wisp chose that moment to return.

  It drifted past me, rose high, higher, brightness increasing in intensity to a level far beyond anything it had exhibited earlier. It hovered at a height of fifteen or twenty feet and blazed like a flare. Below it stood Dango. He had no choice but to stand.

  He was rooted to the spot.

  His lean, triangular face bore a long, black beard and flowing hair that twined away among his limbs, his leaves. His eyes were dark and sunken and wretched. The bark that was a part of him bore insect holes, birddroppings and char-marks of numerous small fires about the base. I saw then that blood dripped from the limb I had broken as I'd passed him by.

  I rose, slowly.

  "Dango ..." I said.

  "They're gnawing at my feet!" he told me.

  "... I'm sorry." I lowered the gun, almost dropped it.

  "Why didn't he let me stay dead?"

  "Because once you were my friend, and then you were my enemy," I
said. "You knew me, well."

  "Because of you?" The tree swayed, as if reaching after me. He began to curse me, and I stood there and listened as the rain mingled with his blood and soaked into the ground. We had been partners in a joint venture one time, and he'd tried to cheat me. I'd brought charges, he was acquitted and tried to kill me afterwards. I put him in the hospital, back on Earth, and he'd died in an auto accident a week after his discharge. He would have killed me if he'd gotten the chance-- with a knife, I know. But I never gave him the chance. You might sort of say I helped his bad luck along when it came to the accident. I knew he'd never rest until he'd nailed me or was dead, and I didn't feel like getting nailed.

  The raking light made his features look ghastly. He had the complexion of a mushroom and the eyes of an evil cat. His teeth were broken and there was a festering sore on his left cheek. The back of his head was joined with the tree, his shoulders merged with it and there were two branches which might contain his arms. From the waist down he was tree.

  "Who did it?" I asked.

  "The big green bastard. Pei'an... ." he said. "Suddenly, I was here. I don't understand. There was an accident ..."

  "I'll get him," I said. "I'm going after him now. I'm going to kill him. Then I'll get you out--"

  "No! Don't go!"

  "It's the only way, Dango."

  "You don't understand what it's like," he said. "I can't wait... . Please."

  "It may only take a few days, Dango."

  "... And he may get you instead. Then it'll be never. Christ! How it hurts! I'm sorry about that deal, Frank. Believe me... . Please!"

  I looked down at the ground and up at the light.

  I raised the gun and lowered it.

  "I can't kill you any more," I said.

  He bit his lip and the blood ran down his chin and into his beard and the tears came out of his eyes. I looked away from his eyes.