The Pool of Fire (The Tripods) (5 page)

So we reached the river indicated on our map, a broad warm waterway which moved in sluggish serpentine coils through a green valley. And turned back toward home.

•  •  •

The return journey was different. We took a pass through a range of mountains and came out near the eastern shore of that sea we had glimpsed from the
ruined great-city that stood on the isthmus. We followed it around, to the north, and west, making good time and once more winning great numbers to our cause. The people spoke the Russian tongue, and we had been given some instruction in this, and notes to study. We traveled north, but summer was outstripping us: the land was bright with flowers and I recall one time when we rode all day long in the intoxicating scent of young oranges, ripening on the branches of huge groves of trees. Our schedule called for us to be back at the caves before winter, and we had to press on fast to keep it.

We were moving back toward the City of the Masters as well, of course. From time to time, we saw Tripods, striding across the horizon. We saw none close at hand, though, and were grateful for that. None, that is, until the Day of the Hunt.

•  •  •

The Masters, as we had learned, treated the Capped differently in different places. I do not know whether the spectacle of human variety amused them—they themselves, of course, had always been of one race and the notion of national differences, of many individual languages, of war which had been the curse of mankind before their conquest, was utterly strange to them. In any event, although they prohibited war they encouraged other forms of diversity and separateness, and cooperated to some extent in human customs. Thus, in the Capping ceremony, they followed a ritual as their slaves did, appearing at a certain time, sounding a particular dull booming call, fulfilling prescribed motions.
At the tournaments in France, and at the Games, they attended patiently throughout, though their only direct interest was in the slaves they would acquire at the end. Perhaps, as I say, this sort of thing amused them. Or perhaps they felt that it fulfilled their role as gods. At any rate, we came to a strange and horrible demonstration of it, when we were only a few hundred miles from our journey’s end.

For many days we had been following a vast river, on which, as in the case of the river that had led us north to the Games, much traffic plied. Where the ruins of a great-city lay in our path, we detoured onto higher ground. The land was well cultivated, to a large extent with vines which had been recently stripped of grapes for the harvest. It was populated, and we stayed the night at a town that looked down toward the ruins and the river and the broad plain beyond, through which it ran into an autumn sunset.

The town, we found, was seething with excitement, crowded with visitors from as far as fifty miles around, on account of what was to take place the following day. We asked questions, as ignorant wandering peddlers, and were answered readily enough. What we learned was horrifying.

The day was called by different names—some spoke of the Hunt, others of Execution Day.

In my native England, murderers were hanged, a brutal and disgusting thing but one which was thought necessary to protect the innocent, and which was carried out expeditiously and as humanely as such a practice could be. Here, instead, they were kept in prison
until one day in the autumn, when the grapes were in and pressed and the first new wine ready. Then a Tripod came, and one by one the condemned were turned loose, and the Tripod hunted them while the townspeople watched and drank wine and cheered the sight. Tomorrow there were four to be hunted and killed, a greater number than there had been for several years. On that account the excitement was the greater. The new wine would not be served until the day, but there was old wine enough and a good deal of drunkenness as they slaked their thirsts and nursed their feverish anticipations.

I turned from the sight, sickened, and said to Fritz, “At least we can leave at daybreak. We do not have to stay and watch what happens.”

He looked at me calmly. “But we must, Will.”

“Watch a man, whatever his crime, sent out for a Tripod to course him like a hare? While his fellow men make wagers on the time he will last?” I was angry and showed it. “I do not call that an entertainment.”

“Nor do I. But anything which concerns the Tripods is important. It is as it was when we were in the City together. Nothing must be overlooked.”

“You do it, then. I will go on to the next halt, and wait for you there.”

“No.” He spoke tolerantly but firmly. “We were instructed to work together. Besides, between here and the next village, Max might put his foot in a hole and throw me and I might break my neck in the fall.”

Max and Moritz were the names he had given the two donkeys, after characters in certain stories that
German boys were told in their childhood. We both smiled at the thought of the sure-footed Max putting a foot wrong. But I realized that there was a lot in what Fritz said: witnessing the scene was part of our job and not to be shirked on account of unpleasantness.

“All right,” I said. “But we move on the moment it’s over. I don’t want to stay in this town any longer than I must.”

He looked around the cafe in which we were sitting. Men sang drunkenly and banged their glasses on the wooden tables, spilling wine. Fritz nodded.

“I neither.”

•  •  •

The Tripod came during the night. In the morning it stood in a field just below the town, silent, motionless, as those other Tripods had stood at the tournament of the Tour Rouge and the Games Field. This was a day of festival. Flags were flown, lines of bunting ran from roof to roof across the narrow streets, and street traders were out early, selling hot sausages, sweetmeats, sandwiches of chopped raw meat and onion, ribbons and trinkets. I looked at a tray one man was carrying. It contained a dozen or more little wooden Tripods, each holding in its tentacle the tiny agonized figure of a man. The trader was a cheerful, red-faced man and I saw another as kindly looking, a prosperous gaitered farmer with a bushy white beard, buy two of them for his twin grandchildren, a flaxen-headed boy and pigtailed girl of six or seven.

There was much competition for the good vantage points. I did not feel like pressing for one, but Fritz
had already fixed things. Many householders, whose windows looked down from the town, rented space at them, and he had bought places for us. The charge was high, but it included free wine and sausages. It also included the use of magnifying glasses.

I had seen a shop window full of these, and had gathered that this was a center for their manufacture. I had wondered why, at the time, not understanding the connection. I knew now. We looked out over the heads of a crowd, with the sunlight glinting from a great number of lenses. Not far away, where a road ran steeply downhill, a man had set up a telescope on a stand. It was at least six feet long, and he was shouting, “Genuine close-up views! Fifty groschen for ten seconds! Ten schillings for the kill! As close as if he were on the other side of the street!”

The crowd’s frenzy grew with the waiting. Men stood on platforms and took bets—as to how long the Hunt would last, how far the man would get. This seemed absurd to me at first, for I did not see how he could get any distance at all. But one of the others in the room explained. The man was not sent out on foot, but on horseback. The Tripod could easily outdistance the horse, of course, but a horseman, getting what advantage he could from the terrain, might evade being taken for as long as a quarter of an hour.

I asked if anyone ever escaped. My companion shook his head. It was theoretically possible: there was a rule that beyond the river there was no pursuit. But it had never happened, in all the years that the Hunt had been held.

Suddenly the crowd hushed. I saw that a saddled horse was being led into the field above which the Tripod loomed. Men in gray uniforms brought along another man, dressed in white. I stared through the glasses and saw that he was a tall raw-boned man, about thirty, who looked lost and bewildered. He was helped to mount the horse, and sat there, with the uniformed men holding the stirrups on either side. The hush deepened. Into it came the tolling of the bell of the church clock, as it struck the hour of nine. On the last stroke they stood back, slapping the horse’s flank. The horse bounded forward, and the crowd’s voice rose in frenzy.

He rode down the slope toward the distant silver gleam of the river. He had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile before the Tripod moved. A huge metal foot uprooted itself, arced through the sky, and was followed by another. It was not hurrying particularly. I thought of the man on horseback, and felt his fear rise as bile in my own mouth. I looked from the scene to the faces around me. Fritz’s was impassive, as usual, intent and observing. The others . . . they nauseated me, I think, more than what was taking place outside.

It did not last long. The Tripod got him as he galloped across the bare brown slope of a vineyard. A tentacle came down and picked him from the horse with the neatness and sureness of a girl threading a needle. Another cry rose from those who watched. The tentacle held him, a struggling doll. And then a second tentacle . . .

My stomach heaving, I scrambled to my feet, and ran from the room.

The atmosphere was different when I returned, the feverishness having been replaced by a sort of relaxation. They were drinking wine and talking about the Hunt. He had been a poor specimen, they decided. One, who appeared to be a senior servant from the estate of a Count who had a castle near by, had lost money on him and was indignant about it. My reappearance was greeted with a few mocking remarks and some laughter. They told me I was a weak-bellied foreigner, and urged me to have a liter of wine to steady my nerves. Outside, the same relaxation—a sense almost of repletion—could be observed in the crowd. Bets were being paid off, and there was a brisk trade in hot pasties and sweetmeats. The Tripod, I noticed, had gone back to its original position in the field.

Gradually, as the hour ticked by, tension built up once more. At ten o’clock, the ceremony repeated itself, with the same quickening of excitement in those about us, the same roar of joy and approval as the Hunt began. The second victim gave them better sport. He rode fast and well, and for a time avoided the Tripod’s tentacle by riding under the cover of trees. When he broke into the open again, I wanted to shout to him to stay where he was. But it would have done no good, as he must have known: the Tripod could have plucked the trees out from around him. He was making for the river, and I saw that there was another copse perhaps half a mile further on. Before he got there, the tentacle swept down. The first time he dodged it, swerving his horse at just the right moment so that the rope of metal flailed down and hit the ground beside him. He had a
chance, I thought, of reaching his objective, and the river was not so very much further on. But the Tripod’s second attempt was better aimed. He was plucked from the saddle and his body pulled apart, as the first man’s had been. In a sudden hush, his cries of agony came thinly to us through the bright autumnal air.

I did not come back after that killing. There were limits to what I could stand, even in the cause of duty. Fritz stuck it out, but he looked grim when I saw him later and was even more taciturn than usual.

•  •  •

A few weeks later, we reached the caves. Their gloomy depths were strangely attractive, a haven from the world through which we had journeyed for almost a year. The walls of rock enfolded us, and the lamps flickered warmly. More important, though, was the release from the strain of mixing with and dealing with the Capped. Here we conversed with free men like ourselves.

For three days we were idle, apart from the ordinary duties in which all shared. Then we had our orders, from the local Commander, a German whose name was Otto. We were to report, in two days’ time, at a place specified only as a point on a map reference. Otto himself did not know why.