Sea of Silver Light (72 page)

Paul could only swallow what felt like a stone in his throat and accept the gun.

Only a few people saw them off. The rest of the refugees seemed to have decided that there was not much point in wasting time on a group of doomed fanatics. Of the half-dozen who stood at the cavern's outer edge, only Annie Ladue seemed genuinely sad.

"I can't believe you're going off to . . . that you're going off without even taking a meal with us."

Paul frowned. How to explain that they needed no food and could not afford to waste time eating? All this prevarication, not being able to tell people the truth about their own existences. . . . It was something like being a god among mortals, but he doubted most gods ever felt so miserable. "It's our religion," he said, by way of an explanation.

Annie shook her head. "Well, I'm not the most Christian woman you'll meet, I suppose, but Godspeed to you all." She turned abruptly and walked back inside.

"I'll not offer you my hand," Masterson said. "I can't abide such foolishness as this. But I will echo what Annie said, and add 'good luck.' I can't imagine where anyone could find that much luck, though. Titus, make sure you at least come back safely."

"What . . . what are you going to do with the prisoner?" Paul asked.

"Let's put it this way," said Masterson, "in consideration of tender sensibilities. We're not going to be giving him a testimonial dinner. But it'll be a lot quicker than what you'll get down in Dodge if his kinfolk catch hold of you." He nodded his head, tipped his hat to Martine and Florimel, and led the rest of the silent farewell party back into the cavern.

"Well, on that cheerful note," Titus said, "I reckon we should get going. Y'all follow me close and quiet. If I hold my hand up like this, just stop—don't say nothing, just stop. Got me?"

The river was already hidden in shadow below them as they set off, and evening shadows ran purple down the far mountains. Bringing up the rear, Paul could barely see his companions, although the nearest was only a few meters in front of him.

How many worlds?
he wondered.
How many worlds are falling under shadow right now?

It was not a question he could ponder very long or very thoroughly while making his way down the steep mountain slope, a thousand feet or more above the river valley.

Even with the confident Titus leading the way, they did not make very fast time. Florimel's bad leg slowed them, and T4b did not seem to like heights anywhere near so much when he wasn't imagining himself playing a familiar game. Almost half the night passed before they felt the moisture of the river in the air, although they had heard its thrashing roar for some time.

Titus was sparing of conversation, but during their stops for rest he told them a little of his life, of his childhood in Maryland as the son of a freed slave and his own escape westward. He had spent much of his adulthood as a trail hand—Paul had never known that there were black cowboys, but Titus said there were thousands like him all over the southwest. He had been riding herd on a shipment of shorthorns that had come up from Texas to the Dodge City railhead, and was in town spending his pay on the night the earth began to move.

"The most frightening thing I ever saw." He was almost invisible in the moonlight, but his pale, crooked teeth showed for a moment as he put a wad of tobacco into his mouth. "Worse than all those hundreds of same-looking fellows on horseback that came later, screaming and hollering. Everything was shaking, then the land just folded up—at first I thought we were sinking into the middle of the Earth, then I saw that it was mountains growing right up out of the ground all around us, shooting up like a cane-brake. I thought it was Judgment Day, like my mama taught me. Maybe it was. Maybe this is the End of Days. Lots of others think so."

And for them it is,
Paul thought.
But when they're all dead, will they rise again and start over like the Looking Glass people? Or has Dread frozen this simulation in permanent decay?

Titus was right—the mountains had simply sprouted from the ground like weeds. As they neared the valley floor they found no foothills, no gentling of the slope, only a jumble of boulders and scree around the mountains' roots. This was the most difficult part of the journey so far, every step threatening to set off a landslide, so although he was aware of the glow for some time, it wasn't until they were actually standing on the muddy fiats beside the river that Paul saw the fires of Dodge City.

"Great God," Florimel said quietly. "What have they done?"

"What they'll do to you," Titus whispered. "And to me, too, so shut up!"

He beckoned them into a hollow where a cluster of boulders had tumbled free of the mountainside and stood piled like a giant pawnbroker's sign. From this pathetic hiding place they could look out across the river and the narrow valley to a huge bonfire in the main street that blotted the stars with its massive plume of smoke, as well as countless lesser blazes running along the roofs of Dodge City like Christmas tinsel. Shadows leaped and twirled through the stark, red-lighted streets; even from the far side of the river, they could hear screams.

"It's burning down," Paul whispered.

"Naw. Been like that since those devil-men took it," said.

Titus. "Burns and burns, but it doesn't never burn down." He shook his head slowly. "The End of Days."

"So where are we going, exactly?" Paul quietly asked Martine. He could feel his own heart hammering, and could see that Florimel and T4b were no less disturbed at the idea of walking into such a terrible place.

"I don't know. Let me have a quiet moment to think." She got up and crawled a few meters away, putting one of the massive boulders between herself and her companions.

"Hate to spoil things," Titus said, "but it's time for this mother's son to be moving on."

"Just wait a moment longer," Paul begged him. "We may have more questions to ask you. . . ."

The moment stretched into something longer, while Paul and the others watched the proof of Titus' words not a half-kilometer away, flames that burned and burned along the housetops and high false fronts but never consumed them, despite the apparent flimsiness of the buildings.

"It is no use," Martine said, crawling back. "I can make nothing of it—too many distractions, too much disruption. If Dread had set out deliberately to make things difficult for my senses, he could not have done better."

"So where then?" Florimel demanded. "Simply walk into that? It would be madness."

"Just follow the river, us," T4b suggested. "Make a raft. Sail on out of this scan-palace."

"Were you not listening?" Although her voice was low, Martine sounded as angry as Paul had ever heard her. "There is no other way to the place we seek. If we follow the river to the far gateway, and we are not killed by something on the way, there is little chance the gate will be open and no guarantee it will not dump us somewhere worse. If we wish to reach Egypt we must find this nearer gateway."

"Find we get sixed up true, ask me," T4b muttered, but fell silent.

"Where are the places we have encountered these things before," she said to Paul and Florimel. "Mazes? Catacombs?"

"The mines?" Florimel suggested. "There were mines on the mountainside." She groaned. "Great God, I do not think I can climb back up."

"Cemeteries," Paul said. "Places of the dead. The Brotherhood's little joke." He allowed himself a grim smile. "Came back and bit them in the arse, too, didn't it?" He turned to Titus, who had been watching them with puzzled fascination. "Is there a cemetery in the town?"

"Oh, yeah, just outside to the northwest. Over that way." He pointed across the river, out toward the darkness to the left of the blazing town. "Got some silly-ass name. Boot Hill, something like that."

"Boot Hill," Paul breathed. "I've heard of it. Can we just cross the river and walk to it?" He looked at his companions. "We won't even have to go into the town at all."

"I got no idea what kind of nonsense you all plan to get up to, but I can tell you this—you're not getting to Boot Hill by going around Dodge that direction. When the mountains came up, the riverbanks broke up over there. It's a swamp now, and there are snakes as big around as a bedroll and long as a twenty-mule team, not to mention mosquitoes the size of hawks." He shrugged. "I know it doesn't make no earthly sense, snakes and jackalos and whatnot just coming up out of the ground like that—why didn't anyone see one before? That's why I think it's Judgment."

"We know about the snakes here," said Paul. "We met one. What about the other way around, east of the town?"

"Not too good of an idea. Just beyond town that way the Arkansas drops off just like that," he tilted his long fingers steeply downward, "—a waterfall—and there's a canyon goes down so deep it's dark at the bottom even at high noon. Canyon stretches for miles that direction. Why do you think we're all living on that mountainside instead of getting the blazes away from here?" He stood up. "You should have listened to Masterson when he told you to stay put. He's a good man, and has a lot more sense than most. Now I'm going to get moving. I don't like being this close to Dodge."

"But wait," Florimel said, a hint of panic in her voice. "Do we just . . . walk across the bridge?"

"If you can't wait to lose your scalps, sure enough. There's a dozen or so of them devil-men sitting on it night and day. But if you'd like to draw the whole thing out a little longer, I suggest you wade across the river a few hundred feet this side of the bridge. The Arkansas is good and shallow this time of year, even with all this topsy-turvy."

He threw them a mocking salute and then was gone into the darkness, silent as a bird flying.

"Everyone seems pretty damned certain we're going to be killed," Paul said quietly.

"Everyone is probably right," growled Florimel.

The Arkansas waters, though never more than waist-deep, had a distinctly sinister feel, warm and oily. The river even had a strange undertow which tugged steadily at the travelers despite the sluggishness of the current, like a street urchin who had found his intended mark and would not turn loose.

Paul found he did not want to think about the water much, not just because of the unpleasant feel, but because he found himself imagining the many different things that might be swimming toward them from the swamp Titus had described.

Far on their right along the riverbank, illuminated by another group of huge bonfires, stood a massive fenced enclosure that Paul guessed was some kind of yard for shipping cattle. Despite the late hour it seemed that branding was going on, although wordless but still distinctive shrieks made it clear the victims were not cows.

Not all the voices were raised in pain. As a chorus of shouts and laughs rolled out from the stockyard Paul saw Martine falter and almost fall into the water. He grabbed her arm to brace her.

"To hear his voice again," she whispered, eyes squeezed tightly shut as if she could somehow make herself deaf by increasing her blindness. "To hear it multiplied, echoed over and over on all sides. . . ."

"It's just a trick. Like you said, they're just crude copies. He's not really here." But was that true, he wondered, or wishful thinking? Perhaps Dodge had a new sheriff.

A dozen meters from the bank, Martine grabbed Paul's arm again. For a moment he thought that the situation had finally become too much for her, but though her face showed strain, she was alert, listening, scanning.

"Titus was right," she hissed. "There are men on the bridge."

"That's why we're here," Paul said, but he waved for T4b and Florimel to stop.

"But there are men on the other side of the river, too," she said. "Not close enough for us to hear them, but I can sense them. If we come up out of the river we'll be right in their laps."

"So what should we do?" Paul was fighting to keep a handle on his own desperation. Cries of misery and terror floated through the valley, echoing dimly in the mountainsides. "We can't go back!"

"Turn west," Martine said decisively. "Stay in the river. Go under the bridge. We'll be closer to the side of town we want—we will not have to cross so much open ground."

"You said there are men on the bridge!" Florimel whispered, leaning in close. "What if they hear us?"

"We have no other choice," Martine told her, but still no one moved. Paul could feel the moment hanging and knew that, surprisingly, the others were waiting for him to decide. He turned and began wading toward the bridge.

As they drew closer he could see shadowy human shapes atop the span, silhouetted by the numerous fires, but to Paul's relief they were down at the end nearer the town. He moved out toward midstream and into a deep spot where the oily water again streamed just beneath his chest and even higher on the two women. The wooden bridge was wide and low, but there was plenty of room beneath for them to pass. As Paul moved under it the darkness enfolded him like a fist.

Before he had gone halfway he heard loud footsteps above him. He froze, hoping the others would do the same even though they couldn't see him. The bridge creaked as more men joined the first. Paul cursed silently: the footsteps seemed to be right overhead. Had they been spotted? Maybe the Dread-replicas were just waiting until they emerged from the bridge's shadow to shoot them like fish in a shallow pond.

Even as he stood, his pulse beating so hard in his temple it felt like someone was tapping his head, he heard a muffled splash a few meters away, then a wash of current. An invisible something was in the water with them—one of the men climbing down from the bridge to investigate? Paul pulled the gun out of the inner pocket of his jumpsuit and held it high above the level of the water, afraid to shoot but terrified at the thought of a wrestling match with anyone as wiry and strong as the man they had seen in the cave.

"What. . . ?" Florimel whispered, but never finished her question. Something thundered from above, an explosion so sudden and loud that for a moment Paul thought he had pulled his own gun's trigger by accident. The shot was still echoing in his ears when something big and solid smashed into him. He was thrown sideways off his feet; if he had not been flung into one of his companions, he would have gone under the water, gun and all. The men above were shouting and laughing, which covered the noises of terror from Paul's friends as they realized that something huge was in the water with them, thrashing violently.