Var the Stick Page 11

  If the stranger were typical of these outland warriors, Var would be able to defeat him despite his handicaps. Particularly stick against stick. Certainly he had to try.

  The man preceded him down the path to the circle. This was a relief, for it meant Var could conceal his limp while walking. The man kicked the circle free of loose snow, drew out his second stick, removed his tall backpack and his parka, and took his stance. Suddenly he looked more capable; there was something highly professional about the way he handled himself.

  Var, afraid to reveal his mottled skin, had to remain fully dressed, though it inhibited his mobility he entered the circle.

  They sparred, and 'immediately Var's worst fears were realized. He faced a master sticker. The man's motions were exceptionally smooth and efficient, his blows precise.

  Var had never seen such absolute control before. And speed those hands were phenomenal, even in this cold.

  Knowing that the had to win quickly if at all, Var laid on with fury. He was slightly larger than his opponent, and probably stronger, and desperation gave him unusual skill despite his injury and fatigue. In fact, he was fighting better than ever before in his life, tbough he knew he would lose that edge in a few minutes as his resources, gave out. At this moment, Tyl himself would have had to back off, reassess his strategy, and look to his defenses.

  Yet the stranger met every pass with seeming ease, anticipating Var's strategy and neutralizing his force. Surely this was the finest slicker ever to enter the circle!

  Then, abruptly, the man took the offense and penetrated Var's own guard as though it were nonexistent and laid him out with a blow against the head. Half conscious, Var fell backwards across the circle. He was finished.

  His face sidewise in the snow, Var heard something. It was a noise, a shudder in the ground, as of ponderous feet coming down: crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. An earless attuned to the wilderness could not have picked it up, and Var himself would have missed it, had his ear not been jammed to the land, It was the distant tread of the Master.

  The victor stood above him, looking down curiously. "Stranger!" Var cried, half delirious "Never have I met your like. I beg a boon of you" He was incoherent again, and had to slow down. "Let no man enter that hostel tonight! Guard her, give her time"

  The man squatted to peer: at him. Had he understood any of it? it was unprecedented for the loser to beseech terms from the winner but what else could he do now?

  "A badlands grub she will die if disturbed" And Var himself would die if he didn't drag himself away immediately. Then who would take care of Soli? Would the Master linger to help her? Not while the vengeance trail was warm! No it had to be this stranger, if only he would. Such exceeding skill in the circle bad to be complemented by meticulous courtesy.

  The man reached out to touch Var's injured leg. The sheet had come loose and a section of swollen skin showed.

  He nodded. This man would have won anyway but he could not be pleased to discover he had fought a lame opponent. He stood and stepped out of the circle, leaving Var where he lay. He donned his parka, then his pack, putting the sticks away. He walked down the trail 'in the direction the Master was coming from.

  He was leaving the cabin to Var.

  Var did not question the stranger's act of generosity. He climbed to his feet and limped back to the cabin, turning several times to watch the man's departure. At last he entered and shut the door.

  The' stranger would meet the Master. Var was at his mercy now. Who was this silent one, and how had he come by such fabulous fighting skill? Var knew that no sticker in all the empire could match this warrior.

  But the Master was not a sticker. What would pass between them when' they met? Would they fight? Talk? Come to this cabin together? Or pass each other, and the Master would come to find the fugitives here?

  Soil stirred and he forgot all else. "Var.. . Var," she cried weakly, and he rushed to her side. She was recovering! If only they were granted the night, They were. Though Var listened apprehensively for footsteps outside, no man came to the hostel, in the morning Soil was well, though weak. "What happened?" she asked.

  "You were stung by a badlands moth its winter grub," Var said, though this was only conjecture. "It came alive when we warmed the ground, and got on you. I brought you here."

  "What are those marks on you?"

  "I fought a man who would intrude." And that was all he told her, lest she worry.

  This time they picked up extra sheeting, so as to make possible a double layer on the ground and keep moisture and grubs out entirely. Var explained that they had lost time and had 'to move; he did not clarify how close he knew the Master to be, but she caught his urgency.

  So they resumed their desperate trek. Soli was weak, but she could walk. In her residual disorientation she was not aware of Var's limp.

  As they left the hostel, Var looked down the path once more, mystified. Who was the noble, dazzling, silent man who had made their escape possible? Would he ever know?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They marched northward through winter and emerged at last in spring far beyond the crazy domains. Here they found complete strangers: men and women who carried some guns and bows but not true weapons, and who did not fight in the circle, and who lived in structures resembling primitive, dilapidated hostels. They burned wood to warm these "houses" because there was no electricity, and Illuminated them with smoky oil lanterns. They spoke an unpleasantly modulated dialect, and were not especially friendly. It was as though every family were an island, cultivating its own fields, hunting its own preserve, neither attacking nor assisting strangers.

  Still the Master followed, falling behind as much as a month, then catching up almost to within sight, forcing them to move out quickly. Now the silent man Var had fought accompanied the Nameless One. The scattered news reports and rumors described him well enough for Var to identify, though he said nothing to Soil about this. If she knew that a warrior of that quality had chosen to accompany the Master...

  Had those two fought, and the Master had made the stranger part of the empire? Or had they joined forces for convenience, in the dangerous hinterlands?

  Summer, and the country remained rugged and the pursuit continued. Soil was taller and stronger now, growing rapidly, and was quite capable. She learned from him how to make vine traps in the forest and capture small animals, and to skin them and gut them. How to strike fire and cook the meat. She learned to make a deadfall, and to sleep comfortably in a tree. Her hair grew out, black and fine, so that she resembled her natural mother more than ever.

  Soli taught him, in return, the rudiments of the weaponless combat she had learned from Sosa, and the strategies demonstrated by her father Sol. For they both knew that eventually the Master would catch up, and that Var, despite his reservations, would have to fight. The Nameless One would force the combat.

  "But it's better to run as long as we can," she said, seeming to have changed her attitude over the months. "The Weaponless defeated Sol in the circle, long ago when I was small, and Sol was the finest warrior of the age."

  Var wondered whether Sol could have been as good as the sticker now traveling with the Master, but he kept that thought to himself.

  "It was the Weaponless who struck my father on the throat so hard he could not speak again," she said, as though just remembering. "Yet you say they were friends."

  "Sol does not speak?" Var's whole body tingled with an appalling suspicion.

  "He can't. The underworld surgeon offered to operate, but Sol wouldn't tolerate the knife. Not that way. It was as though he felt he had to carry that wound. That's what Sosa said, but she told me not to talk about it."

  Var thought again of the fair stranger, the master sticker, now almost certain that he knew the man's identity. "What would your father do, if he thought you were dead?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't like to think about it, so I don't. I miss him, and I'm really sorry" But she cut off that thought. "Bob prob
ably wouldn't tell him. I think Bob pretended I was being sent on an exploratory mission and didn't return. Bob almost never tells the truth."

  "But if Sol found out"

  "I guess he would kill Bob, and" Her mouth opened. "Var, I never thought of that! He would break out of the underworld and"

  "I met him," Var said abruptly. "When you were ill. We did not know each other. Now he travels with the Master."

  "Sol is the Nameless One's companion? I should have realized! But that's wonderful, Var! They are together again. They must really be friends."

  Var told her the rest of the story: how he had fought Sol, and tried to send him back to oppose the Master. About the strange generosity of the other man. "I did not know," he finished. "I kept him from you."

  She kissed his cheek-a disconcertingly feminine gesture.

  "You did not know. And you fought for me!"

  "You can go back to him."

  "More than anything else," she said, "I would like that.

  But what of you, Var?"

  "The Master has sworn to kill me. I must go on."

  "If Sol travels with the Weaponless, he must agree with him. They must both want to kill you now."

  Var nodded miserably.

  "I love my father more than anything," she said slowly. "But I would not have him kill you, Var. You are my friend. You gave me warmth on the mesa, you saved me from illness and snow."

  He had not realized that she attached such importance to such things. "You helped me, too," he said gruffly.

  "Let me travel with you a while longer. Maybe I'll find a way to talk to my father, and maybe then he can make the Nameless One stop chasing you."

  Var was immensely gratified by this decision of hers, but he could not analyse his feeling. Perhaps it was this glimmer of a promise of some mode of reconciliation with his mentor, the Master. Perhaps it was merely that he no longer felt inclined to. travel alone. But mostly, it could be the loyalty she showed for him-that filled an obscure but powerful need that had made him miserable since the Master's turn about to have a friend that was the most important thing there was.

  The sea came north and fenced them in. with its salty expanse. The pursuit closed in behind. The unfriendly natives informed them with cynical satisfaction that they were trapped: the ocean was west and south, the perpetual snows north, and two determined warriors east.

  "Except," one surly storekeeper murmured smugly, "the tunnel."

  "Tunnel?" Var remembered the subway tunnel near the mountain. He might hide in such a tube. "Radiation?"

  "Who knows? No one ever leaves it."

  "But where does it go?" Soil demanded.

  "Across to China, maybe" And that was all he would tell them, and probably all he knew.

  "There's another Helicon in China," Soli said later.

  "That's not its name, but that's what it is. Sometimes we exchanged messages with them. By radio."

  "But we are fighting the mountain!"

  "The Nameless One is fighting it. Or was. Sol isn't. We aren't. And this is a different one. It might help us at least enough so I could talk to Sol If we can find it. I don't know where it is in China."

  Var remained uncertain, but had no better alternative. If there was any way to escape the Master, he had to try it.

  The entrance to the tunnel was huge-big enough to accommodate the largest crazy tractor, or even several abreast. The ceiling was arched, the walls gently bowed whether from design or incipient collapse. Var was uncertain at first, but closer inspection revealed its complete sturdiness. There was solid dirt on the floor, but no metal rails. It was a dark hole.

  "Just like the underworld," Soli said, undismayed. "There's an old subway beyond the back storage room. With rats in it. I used to play there, but Sosa said there might be radiation."

  "There was," Var said.

  "How do you know?"

  He summarized his foray to Helicon, before the first battle. "But the Master said she would tell them, so it would be booby trapped. So we didn't use it."

  "She never did. Bob knew it was there, but he said the geigers proved it was impassable, so he didn't worry about it. I guess the radiation was down when you came but Sosa didn't say a word."

  So they could have invaded that way! Why hadn't Sosa given the route away?

  Then he remembered: Sos-Sosa. Sometime in the past she had been his wife, and she must still have loved him. So she hadn't told. But he had thought she had, and so the surface battle had begun. Just one more irony of many.

  Soli lit one of their two lanterns and marched in. Var, perforce, followed.

  Could this great tube actually cross under the entire ocean? What kept the water out, he wondered.

  And why did no one emerge from it, if other men had entered? If the problem were radiation, he would discover it. But he feared that was not the case. There could ne other dangers in fringe radiation zones, as he knew saw mutant wildlife, from deadly moths to giant amphibians, as well as harmless forms like the mock sparrow. And what else, here?

  Deep in the tunnel the walls developed a tiled surface, clean and much more attractive that the bare metal and concrete. Var knew what had happened: the natives had pulled off the nearest tiles for their own use, but had not dared to penetrate too far. The mud on the bottom also slacked off, so that they walked on a fine gray surface, of a coarse texture in detail but marvelously even as a whole.

  It was ideal for running; their feet had excellent traction.

  But how far could this continue? After an hour's brisk walk, he asked Soil: "How wide is the ocean?"

  "Jim showed me a map once. He said this way was the Pacific, and it's about ten thousand miles wide."

  "Ten thousand milesi It will take years to cross!" -

  "No," she said. "You know better than that, Var. You can figure. If we walk four miles an hour, twelve hours a day, that's almost fifty miles."

  "Twenty days to cover a thousand miles," he said, after a moment's difficult computation. "To cover ten thousand over six months to cross it all. We have supplies for hardly a week!"

  She laughed. "It isn't so wide up here. Maybe less than a hundred miles. I'm not sure. I think the tunnel must come up for air every so often, on the little, islands. So we won't have to walk it all at one stretch!"

  Var hoped she was right. The tunnel was unnatural, and his nose picked up the dryness of it, the deadness. If danger fell upon them here, how could they escape?

  They walked another hour, Soil swinging her lantern to make the grotesque shadows caper, and Var realized what it was that disturbed him most. The other tunnel, the subway passage, had teemed with life, though touched by radiation. This one had neither. Var knew that life intruded wherever it could, and should be found in a protected place like this. What kept it clean? There had to be a reason and not any swarm of shrews, for there were no droppings.

  They rested briefly to eat and drink and leave the substance of their natural processes on the floor, since there was nowhere to bury it. They went on.

  Then down the tunnel came a monster. It rumbled and hissed as it moved, and shot water from its torso, and it was bathed in steam. A tremendous eye speared light ahead.

  Var froze for a moment, terrified. Then his instincts took over. He backed and turned and started to run.

  "No!" Soli cried, but he hardly paid attention.

  As he plunged down the tunnel, she plunged too and tackled him. Both fell and the rushing glare played over them.

  "Machine!" she cried. "Man-made. It won't hurt men!" Now the thing was bearing down on them, faster than they could run, and the clank of its sparkling treads was deafening. It filled the passage.

  "Stand up!" Soil screamed. "Show you're a man!" She meant it literally.

  Var obeyed, unable to think for himself. Men seldom daunted him, but he had never experienced anything like this before.

  Soli took his hand and stood by him, facing the machine.

  "Stop!" she cried at it, and waved her other
hand in the blinding light, but it did not stop.

  "Its recognition receptor must be broken!" she shouted, barely audible above the din though her mouth was inches from his ear. "It doesn't know us!"

  Var no longer had any doubts about what kept the passage clean. The water spouted out was probably a chemical spray such as the crazies used to clear pathways, that killed and dissolved anything organic. And men were organic.

  They could not escape. The monster filled the tunnel, blasting its chemicals against the sides and ceiling, and he saw its front sweepers scooping dust into a hopper and wetting it down too. They could not get around it and could not outrun it. They had to fight.

  Then it was upon them.

  Var picked up Soli and heaved her into the air. As her weight left his arms, he leaped himself.

  The machine struck.

  Var clung to consciousness. He spread his arms, and when one banged against something soft, he grasped it and fetched it in. ,He found a metal rod with the other hand and hung on to it. He held Soli in his arms, and they were riding the machine-bodies spread against the warm headlight, feet braced against the upper rim of the hopper. Once he was sure of his position, he checked Soil. She was limp. He hauled her about so that her head was against his and put his ear to her mouth, and felt the slight gout of air that proved she was breathing. He studied her head and body as well as he could, alternately blinded and shadowed by the cutting edge of light, and found no blood. She was alive and whole-and if the concussion were not severe, she would awaken in time. All he had to do was hold her securely until the machine stopped.

  He shifted about, hunkering down against the hopper rim. The brushes whirled in front, highlighted in the spillage of light, and the water poured down from nozzles, but still the air was foul with dust. Something not quite visible whirred and ground inside the yard-deep hopper, reminding him of gnashing teeth. He kept his feet out of it, certain that he perched precariously over an ugly death. He wrestled Soil around again and draped her over his thighs, supporting her shoulders with his free arm and her feet with one leg. He did not want any part of her to dangle into that dark maw.