Whatever Gods May Be (5 page)

Three weeks had passed since that grizzly day, and Zolansville had meanwhile rebuilt itself and buried its dead.  Since Thalick had not returned to the city with a single survivor, it was generally assumed that not one victim of the massacre-kidnapping remained alive.  For several days afterwards, Thalick had even backtracked through the tunnels that led from the desert into the city, raiding the Redeye City whenever possible and searching for possible injured or escaped refugees that might miraculously have escaped.  Alas, however, such heroic efforts turned up nothing but gutted corpses.  Thalick filled in the tunnels, then departed the sad town to allow it to mourn.  After another week, it was gradually accepted that not one lost loved one could ever be expected to return home again.

But now, amazingly, one lone boy had managed to survive.  Zolan searched the memories of his dreams, trying to recall if the boy was part of the visions he had been having for the past year.  But he could remember nothing; if indeed his dreams were the instruments of future prophecy, then in this instance, they had failed to take into account the random - and miraculous - appearance of this child who had somehow escaped the greatest enemy Mankind had ever known.

"What's your name, boy?" Zolan asked.

The boy's lips trembled with the effort, but at last a name was formed.

"Tom."

"Tom," Zolan said gruffly, then turned to Thalick behind him and snapped, "You got that, Bug? His name is Tom.  Say hello to Tom, Bug."

Thalick was busy producing a concentrated protein mixture for the boy, so was able to offer only a perfunctory hiss of acknowledgment to Zolan's ridiculous proposal.  Since Zolan's brain was the only one that could decipher Stinger transmissions, it was preposterous for Thalick to do anything that the boy could recognize as a gesture of greeting.  Tom continued staring at the Clawed Horror in front of him; he was not shaking anymore, but he was far from relaxed.

"The Guardian won't hurt you, Tom.  You know that," Zolan chuckled, trying to put the boy at ease, "And neither will I."

Zolan turned to Thalick and whispered "Get out of sight, would you, Bug? Just for a little while.  You're scaring the hell out of him."

Thalick walked backwards until he was completely out of the glade.  Shoveling himself into the ground, he covered himself up until only two claws, two antennae and a hooked tail remained above the sand.

"You see, boy?" Zolan cajoled through a wheeze.  "You have nothing to worry about.  Why, ol' Bug here is probably more nervous than you are."

With the Stinger at a respectable distance, the boy calmed noticeably.  This time when Zolan reached out to touch his shoulder, Tom even managed to give the old man a nervous smile.

"Are you Old Grizzly?" Tom asked suddenly.

"Old Grizzly::" Zolan snorted diffidently.  "Is that what I'm being called these days?" Old Grizzly indeed.  What was the world coming to? For five hundred years he had always been referred to as Master.  Obviously, things had changed quite a bit since last he had visited either New Phillips or Zolansville.

Old Grizzly: Zolan played with the name in his mouth several times while feeling and stroking his mangy beard.  Well, he was rather grizzled, there was no doubt about that.  Suddenly, Zolan began laughing.  He reached out an mussed up Tom's hair.

"Yep, I'm Old Grizzly, Tom." he said, then winked at the boy.  "But you can call me Grizz." Pointing a thumb towards Thalick, he added in a clearly confidential tone: "Only my best friends call me that, you know."

The boy seemed to appreciate the humor and giggled.

"Now tell me, Tom," Zolan asked abruptly, once again all business, "How did you get out of the City?"

Tom shot one final glance towards the mired Thalick then pointed at the low up thrusts of salt hills that buffered the edge of the oasis.  Zolan followed the boy's finger through the glade.

A small cavern lay partly concealed by water ivy and assorted fruit-bearing brush - the likes of which, Zolan concluded, the boy must have survived on for the past several weeks.  The cavern, Zolan surmised, was probably an access way to a much more extensive tunnel system lying beneath the sands.  A vast network of these subterranean portals channeled out for miles around the Redeye City, extending as far as the border deserts and nearby sea.  They had been constructed by the ancient civilization of Man for transportation and waste-flushing purposes; connected, they comprised several thousand miles of chamber space.  Long ago, this tangled web of emptiness had provided mass-efficient transit for millions of human beings.  Today, the only things that occupied the abandoned subways were salt water and fetid nothingness.

It was clearly impossible that the boy could have made his way through the tunnels alone.  For one thing, the Redeye City was fifty miles away; for another, the subways were completely darkened.  Only Thalick, Jumpers and Redeyes could safely navigate through their stale interiors.  Escaping the vampires and the rat-slaves had been an extraordinary feat; but to wander through the catacombs for miles in darkness and to resurface unscathed was simply too much for the boy to have accomplished.  There was obviously more to his explanation than was immediately discernible.

"You're very lucky," Zolan said magnanimously, "Did you stay down there all the way from the City?"

"Yes."

"And you could see where you were going?"

"Yes, Grizz."

Zolan relayed a quick message to Thalick.

That's impossible, Bug.  He must be lying.

NEGATIVE, ZOLAN.  BOY SPEAK TRUTH

But how? Zolan transmitted again.

NOT CLEAR, ZOLAN.  BUT STRANGE STRANGE

"You're damn right it's strange:" Zolan bellowed out loud, making the boy jump.  Zolan chewed his gums and began to bluster.  "Now, listen, Tom.  How could you come through those tunnels alone without any light or anything?"

"I wasn't alone, Grizz," Tom said nervously.  Zolan sputtered and fought for words.

"What?"

"
She
helped me, Grizz," the boy said

"She? You mean there was someone else down there with you?" Zolan asked astonished.

Tom nodded shyly, not quite sure what to make of the old man's sudden shift of mood.

Zolan began looking around the glade, shaking his walking stick in all directions.

"Another survivor, Thalick," Zolan announced excitedly, "Female, I guess." Thalick rose out of the sand and again approached the glade entrance.  Tom's eyes grew large and afraid, and he moved up against the face of the boulder behind him.

"Where is she, Tom?" Zolan asked quickly, "Is she hiding? She doesn't need to be afraid of us.  We want to help." Tom looked confused.

"She's not here, Grizz.  She went away." he said.  Thalick had reentered the oasis and was immediately involved in performing a sensor scan of the entire glade.  But aside from Zolan, himself and the boy, there was no evidence that anyone else had ever set foot in this place before them.  The Stinger hissed in frustration, then informed Zolan of his findings.

"Where, uh, did she go then, Tom? How long ago did she leave?" Zolan asked, bewildered.

"When I came here first day, she went away."

"Hell, that was weeks ago.  She probably tried to get back to Zolansville," Zolan mused to himself.  "But why didn't you go with her, Tom?"

Tom shook his head emphatically.  "No, no, Angel no go back to the city, Grizz.  She just," he paused, trying to find the best way to explain what he had seen.  Finally, he settled for a shrug, "She just went away." The boy could tell that this answer was very unsatisfying for Zolan, so he added quickly, "But she say that she will come back."

"She did, eh? And her name is Angel?" Zolan asked cautiously.

"No, Angel has no name," Tom said quickly, then added, "I call her Angel."

WHAT IS ANGEL? Thalick interrupted with a rude, ugly hiss that caused Tom to sink against his rock in a terrified squat.

Zolan stared at the boy long and hard.  "Thalick," he said quietly, "are you sure that we're the only ones who have been here?"

HSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-YES.

Zolan nodded, then looked at Tom once again.  "When is the angel coming back, boy?" he asked.

"Tonight."

Zolan swallowed hard.  "Are you sure?"

Tom nodded slowly, this time his eyes held Zolan's like magnets.

"What else did she tell you," Zolan asked quietly.

Now, Tom looked puzzled.  The Master asked so many questions, he thought to himself in wonder.  Strange, because he had always been told that the Master knew everything.  Why, the Master could even talk to the Guardian.  Tom gulped at this last thought as he regarded the silent Stinger only yards from where he lay helplessly balled up against the boulder.

Perhaps it was a test, the boy deduced brilliantly, just like in school.  Well, he would not disappoint the Master!

"Angel come back tonight.  She told me so.  She want that I wait here." Tom answered a trifle more confidently.

Zolan felt a twinge of pain stab at his chest.  He began massaging it slowly, thinking briefly that this was the beginning.  The pain ebbed momentarily, then returned, this time in stronger waves.  He winced and staggered.

Thalick moved up quickly behind Zolan, sensing the man's discomfort.  Instantly, he recognized the dangerous thrombosis and proceeded to take action.  He could do little to repair the damaged heart tissue, but he effectively transferred most of the pain to his own empathic system.

Zolan was frightened by the attack, but at the same time, he kept hearing the boy's words over and over, keeping rhythm with the waves of agony that periodically clutched his chest like some relentless claw.  Leaning on his walking stick, shaking his head in a fight for consciousness, Zolan whispered:

"Why did she want you to wait?"

Suddenly, he coughed and realized that he was falling.  It seemed like the longest fall he had ever taken; the world swirled about him like a kaleidoscope, vague and twisted, plunging with him to the ground.

Quickly, things started to get black; only a worried hiss from Thalick and the boy's voice remained.

He passed out after that, but not before hearing Tom give the answer to his question.

"She wanted me to wait for you."

FIVE

As twilight descended over the wastes, an eerie breeze invaded the glade.  The oasis rustled and groaned as the sky grew dark; as Zolan listened, he thought that it was sobbing inconsolably for the light it would only miss for half a day.

Sometimes, when Zolan would listen to the dusk winds at home, he thought he could hear voices.  They were always sad voices, though, that were cold, hopeless awl always longing; the sounds, perhaps, of tortured souls that could only bay in torment under the shadow of nightfall.  They were voices, Zolan felt, that he could understand very well and had heard before.  Lonely, full of despair, they were the sounds of a thing or place that was dying - but had yet to die, which were allowed to cry only when the warmth of light disappeared and the dark was master.

But as the night wind brushed against the palms and mesquite, crooning inexorably from one end of the world to the other, Zolan thought that tonight there was another sound riding the dark.  A smile cracked his dried lips, and he blinked at the stars above.  Tonight, Zolan knew, the night was singing to him.  The sharp salt striking his cheek as the breeze increased, along with the brushing and blowing of fauna above and around him, were like the words and melodies and phrasings of a lullaby created just for him.

Each breath was now more painful than the next for Zolan.  His entire left side alternately experienced moments of acute, pin-prickling agony with those of only numbness.  After Thalick had revived him, he had not bothered to ask how serious the coronary had been; he knew that the end was very near.  Now, though he should have remained resting as Thalick had instructed, Zolan struggled to his feet with great difficulty, using one of the Stinger's claws as a crutch.  He grimaced, staggered and cried out softly, as each painful beat of his heart pounded itself into his brain.  But at last he was able to make his way to the lagoon and the waters edge.

Zolan turned to glance at the Stinger and Tom.  The boy had been treated earlier to a protein concentrate the Stinger had concocted, and was now sleeping deeply.  Tom adjusted to Thalick's presence quickly; within a few hours, the toy was crawling all over the Stinger, even helping himself at last, without Zolan's assistance, to the gummy extract that Thalick had produced for him.

It was a peaceful scene to behold, but Zolan knew that Thalick, even at rest, was in the process of cleansing the boy's mind of all recent horrors encountered in the Redeye City.  Thalick had more than once offered to liberate Zolan's more unpleasant memories for him, but the man had always good-naturedly declined such treatment; good or bad, his remembrances were things he wanted desperately to cling to for as long as he lived.  However, for the sake of the boy's future adjustment and return to the world of the living, Zolan had decided that the Stinger's brainwash techniques were appropriate and beneficial for Tom.  His mind would still unfortunately carry the scenes of recent grizzly happenings, but with Thalick's hypnotic therapy, such memories would be referred to only on the rarest occasions.  As the boy matured, it was possible that the entire Redeye incident could be forgotten completely.