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“No more stupe than we’ll look climbing an imaginary mountain,” Ryan replied. “But if that’s what we have to do—”
“That is if it truly is imaginary,” Doc interjected. “There is, of course, the possibility that the abyss was a dream, yet the mountain is real. The one a mask for the other.”
“You know, we could talk about that all day,” J.B. said quietly, spitting on the ground in disgust at their impotence. “We’re not really going to know one way or the other, even when we reach it. But one thing I can tell you for sure is this—the longer we stand around, the farther those coldheart bastards get from us, and the harder it’s going to be to get the kids back and get our jack.”
The Armorer was right. If they intended to finish their mission, they had little option but to continue regardless. And so they started forward again, in silence, hearts and limbs heavy, and all the time knowing that this was exactly the frame of mind that the clouding of their reality had been intended to produce.
Just how hard was it going to be if they had to fight on two planes simultaneously: the mental and the physical?
* * *
MORGAN’S EYES flickered, then rolled back into their usual position. He was surprised to find himself being cradled by the baron, and even more surprised by the distant look in the man’s eyes. It was as though the hardened baron was a million miles away.
And then, as if suddenly noticing that the old man had come to, and not wanting to give anything away, the baron’s worried mien suddenly hardened into its usual mask.
“What did you see, old man? Tell me,” the baron snapped in a harsh voice. It was unnecessarily abrupt, and despite his best intent couldn’t entirely hide the anxiety he felt.
Despite his own fear, exacerbated by the sudden intrusion of the visions he didn’t want to see, Morgan felt a pang of pity for the baron. K wasn’t a man he would have ever thought that he could have sympathy for, and yet he could see that the man had a… A what? A weakness? Was it a weakness to have feelings for your own flesh and blood? Perhaps it was if you were a hard-fighting and hard-fought leader of a ville. So, despite the stubborn streak of his nature that told Morgan to tell the baron to get fucked, in spite of any consequences, he took a deep breath and started to speak.
It was halting and confused as he tried to explain in words the things that he had seen and felt primarily as a series of impressions and emotions, but as he went on the baron’s face changed yet again. He was absorbed by what the old man was telling him. It confirmed his worst fears about the powers of those who had taken the children. At the same time, it boosted his self-esteem. At the back of his mind, still there despite the fears for his own child, was the lurking fear that his judgment had somehow been in error when he allowed these events to happen. But after all, if a man of Morgan’s undoubted doomie sensibility was easy meat to whatever was behind the intruders, then no one could hold him responsible and use that fact to challenge his position.
By the time the old man had finished, the baron had moved back and away, and was hunkered against the wall of the shack, elbows resting on his knees and chin in his hands as he focused on the story. Morgan, for his part, had moved in the opposite direction and had wiped the spittle from his beard. He turned to the barrel where he kept his own personal brew and scooped out a mugful that he downed in one swallow.
K didn’t see it that way. As soon as he saw what the old man was doing, he sprang across the room, swiping the mug from the old man’s fist in one smooth and swift motion.
“No,” he yelled, “you’re not doing that. I want you sober and awake so that you can tell me what’s happening.”
Mutely, Morgan followed the progress of the mug as it flew across the room, its tin body clanging as it hit the boards of the cabin floor, the fire hissing and flaring as a spray of alcohol swept across it like an incoming wave. He turned back to K and looked him squarely in the eye. When he spoke, it was with a hushed gravity that made the baron look away uneasily.
“You idiot. Do you really think that those poor bastards are going to be able to get your daughter back? You don’t give a shit about the other kids. Why the fuck should you? Their parents wouldn’t care squat about your kid, after all. But you should give it up, K. She’s gone. And no amount of making me face going mad seeing what it can do and letting it get inside my head is going to make any bastard difference. Not one little bit. They’re as good as chilled. And so is your daughter. The sooner we face it, the better. Whatever the fuck those coldheart bastards were who took her and the others, they weren’t human. Mebbe once. Before whatever it’s that makes the black fist got hold of them and changed them forever. Mebbe they still have some kind of humanity in them. But if they have, it’s so buried that there ain’t no way it’s ever going to find a way out.
“Face it, K, she’s gone. You lost. We all did. And those poor fuckers you sent after them with the promise of gold? They’re gone, too.”
Chapter Four
Doom. An overwhelming sense of it; a kind of despondency that weighed heavily and seemed to bodily add to any kind of forward momentum so that every step was a task that seemed almost beyond accomplishment.
So it was that they trudged across the hard and hollow earth toward the tower of rock that stood in front of them. It stretched across their vision in the same way that the crevice had but a short time before, and even appeared to curve at the same oblique and impossible angle as it reached the periphery of vision.
Each of them knew that it was an illusion. As they walked in silence they told themselves that, repeating it internally like some kind of mantra. It should have helped to reinforce the knowledge, and perhaps see the illusion crumble in front of their eyes. Yet the edifice remained solid to all appearances.
Krysty, who was the only one of them possessed of the kind of mutated sense that was in any way a match for the mind or minds that had created the wall, felt a despair that was unlike anything that she had ever known. It was more than just the sense that the illusion in front of them was stronger than they could defeat. It was as though the mind itself that had created this was thrusting tendrils into her own consciousness, attempting to find her weak spots and probe at her feelings and memories. To find out more about those who were approaching, perhaps? She wondered if the others were feeling this, or if it was something that was her own experience because of her mutie blood.
If it was her alone, then she had to be strong. She tried to think of anything that could blot it out and block the tendrils of despair with a wall of memory that was designed to combat the negativity. Back where she came from, in Harmony ville, those with the mutie strain and those without had always worked to further their own positivity, and she drew on these lessons.
But the toll on her was great, and the effort it demanded caused her to walk at a slower pace, and to fall back until she was lagging behind the others. Such was their own burden that they didn’t, at first, notice. It was only when they were within a spit of the seemingly impenetrable rock face that Ryan turned back and noticed. He rushed toward her.
“Krysty, what…?”
She shook her head, flame-red tendrils of hair hugging the contours of her face. “Can’t you feel it?”
“What?”
The woman smiled grimly. So it was just a mutie thing. She tried to explain, but the words came out halting and vague. It was like trying to capture a wisp of smoke borne away on the breeze. If she had but known it, she wasn’t the only one having such problems in explaining what was happening to her.
“Can you shut it out for long?” Ryan asked with a calm he didn’t feel. He was worried for Krysty, sure. But he had the others to think of, too, and the safety of all his people was at threat unless she gave an honest answer.
Her twisted grin—half humor and half agony—was all the answer he needed.
“I can try, but every second is a battle. And I don’t think I can win the war, Ryan.”
He nodded grimly. “I know we’re exhausted, people, but we need to get past this obstacle as soon as we can.”
“For what, I wonder?” Doc mused. “Just what lies on the other side? Is it worth our effort, or should we perhaps just leave well enough alone and turn away? After all, do we really need the money?”
As he spoke, he could feel the waves of pressure recede slightly, so negligible as to barely be noticeable, and yet it piqued his curious nature, and he got to his feet and walked toward the rock.
“Perhaps it would be best if we just gave this up as a bad lot and walked away from it, maybe head off in another direction altogether,” he continued with all the conviction he could muster.
Krysty, who had been kneeling as she tried to gather her strength, leaned forward. “Ryan, look.”
Doc was walking toward the rock face as he spoke, and the sheer wall seemed suddenly to shimmer in front of him. For a moment, it became semitransparent. As though through a veil, they could see flat land beyond. A land that seemed to extend beneath a wall of rock that was, bizarrely, still there.
To each of them, it was apparent—if not clear why—that the rock wall was little more than an illusion, and one that it would now be easy to simply walk through as though it wasn’t there. It was as if the consciousness that had created it was somehow impeded or lessened when they considered turning back.
Which, Ryan figured, kind of made sense if the mind behind this was building it as a defense. Why waste the energy it needed if the enemy was no longer a threat? Suppose it could see inside their heads, but had no way of physically seeing what they were doing? If it only locked onto consciousness, then perhaps it might be able to fool it for long enough to pass through.
Ryan stood and followed Doc on his steady progress toward the shimmering rocks. “Fireblast, we don’t need this crap, Doc! You’re right, mebbe it’s about time we gave this shit up as a bad idea. It’s not our fight, after all.”
Krysty held back, unwilling to enter the fray as her psyche might betray the actions that Ryan and Doc were seeking to further. Mildred and J.B. looked on, uncertain as to how either of them would stand up to such scrutiny of conviction. But while they hesitated, for their own reasons, Jak walked forward to join Doc and Ryan.
“Screw this shit. Say we get fuck out, leave ’em to it,” Jak agreed, his impassive visage giving away nothing of the inner turmoil as he sought to convince himself that he should walk away from a fight. It was something that he had never done, and in truth he had no intention of doing so now. Whatever had constructed the illusion of the rock wall didn’t have to know that, though.
The three men advanced on the rock, their self-imposed conviction making the opaque now transparent.
Doc was the first to the surface that now shimmered and flickered like a light that was defective, there and gone in a strobe that was as fast as the blink of an eye. He indicated to the other two that they should stay, as with his other hand he stretched out and tried to touch the surface.
It gave in front of him like a pool of liquid that inexplicably remained on the vertical plane without flowing over him. His hand penetrated the surface without the kind of rippling that he might expect, for although it looked like an illusion of light, it felt as though he was actually plunging his hand into a wall of fluid. There was some resistance and give, and it felt as though the light was flowing and closing around his hand like a dense, viscous fluid.
“We cannot head back to Baron K and tell him that we have reneged on his mission,” Doc said calmly. “I guess we shall have to proscribe a pretty big circle if we are going to avoid him on the way back, seeing as we’ll be without his precious cargo.”
As he spoke, he could feel the fluid grow lighter around his hand and arm. He was able to penetrate it with greater ease. Past the elbow now, and it seemed to be giving him less resistance with each moment. He had almost convinced himself that they would be turning back, so it was little wonder that the so-called rock was giving way. Indeed, so much had Doc convinced himself in his quest to break down the illusion that he had to remind himself to actually move forward: first one foot, then another, so that he was moving within the confines of the illusory rock face.
A moment of panic almost overwhelmed him as the strange semisubstance of the illusion hit his face. It was like plunging his head into a pool of molasses, thick and gloopy, sticking his hair to his head yet not actually making him wet. It felt dry and hot against his skin, which seemed the opposite of how it should feel, and for a second that panic was reinforced by the sudden fear that he may not be able to breathe. Yet, despite the feeling of being closed in by this elusive thing that was not, he was still able to suck air into his lungs. Dry and hot, but still oxygenated.
Doc felt confidence well in him as he took in a breath. He had it beaten, and he would be able to get through to the other side with ease. If he could do it, then that should break the illusion and allow the others—even Krysty—to follow with ease.
And yet, paradoxically, even as he thought this he knew that it was a major mistake. If whatever powered this illusion fed on their received thoughts to know how much power to put into the defense, then to think such a thing was to reveal that it was being deceived. And that way lay disaster.
Even as these thoughts flashed across his mind, he felt the illusion start to regain a kind of solidity that swiftly passed beyond the point it had been fixed upon when his hand first pushed into it. Now it passed from feeling like a dry mist around him to being like molasses again, and then to a state where it was more alarming. It began to increase in pressure around him, constricting his chest and making breath hard to take—not that this mattered, as the hot dry air became like dust that began to choke in his lungs. He felt his arms and legs become encased in something that was, bizarrely, both clinging and also hard around him. It stopped him from moving back to where the others were watching in mute and frozen horror. He could feel that, although it was impossible to see as he was now unable to turn his head.
Around him, the sky and land beyond the end of the illusory wall, which had previously been clear through the transparent and fading defense, was now disappearing as the air around him grew gray, shot through with red streaks of iron ore and sandstone as the rock started to attain the consistency of the land that it sought to copy. Even this was soon lost to him as the opacity grew to such a degree that it began to block out any light around him.
What would be worse? To choke on the air that had become dust, or to be unable to take breath because of the rock that hardened around you so that your chest was constrained, and the space around your mouth and nostrils became filled with the hard substance, allowing no breath to be taken, or even that which remained in your lungs to be expelled, so that they felt like they were exploding?
Perhaps it was the panic of the situation that flung Doc into such a place, but he felt strangely calm as he pondered this fate. If he was going to buy the farm this way, it would at least give him a conundrum in which to pass his last few remaining seconds.
But if Doc had resigned himself to his fate, the same couldn’t be said of his companions. For a moment they were all frozen to the spot, stunned at what they were seeing. The rock seemed to darken and take shape around the old man, encasing him and gradually becoming more opaque so that his shape was becoming lost within it. It seemed absurd and terrible at the same time. The rock itself didn’t exist, they were sure of that. And yet the mental construct that had formed it seemed to be so strong and vital in its force that it made the intangible solid to the extent that it had the physical force of the real thing.
It was Jak who snapped out of this trance first. The albino teen’s hunting and survival instincts kicked in, overriding the shock that had momentarily stopped him dead. Without a word, he sprang forward, plunging himself into the rock.
Why it worked, he had no idea. In fact, the question didn’t even occur to him. Jak didn’t hesitate. And maybe that was the crux of the matter. He didn’t give the construct a thought. Someone put it in his mind, and it wasn’t really there. The logical knot that it was seemingly so solid as to be trapping Doc didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting the old man out.
Jak felt the rock yield against him only with protest. It was like trying to push heavy rocks out of the way, yet these were rocks that had no edges. It was as though the sheet of solid rock in front of him moved and ground around the force of his momentum, yet didn’t break up into rubble. He felt the pressure against his face and chest, closing his nostrils and constricting him. But where Doc had given in to this and accepted it, Jak wouldn’t.
It couldn’t be doing this, as it wasn’t there. Simple as that.
This clear thinking seemed to have an effect on the illusion that the albino youth couldn’t have foreseen. In truth, he didn’t even notice it, so focused was he on his task. Pushing aside the hardness of the rock with what was little more than an effort of will, he reached out until he grasped Doc’s shoulder. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, as the rock was encircling the old man’s form, and yet he felt the soft cloth of Doc’s frock coat beneath his fingers. He clamped them down hard and pulled on the old scholar, to spin him.
Doc felt the hand and was puzzled. A hand through rock? Surely that wasn’t possible. He was shocked more than any other emotion when he felt himself turn in what was, to him, a solid coffin, only to find that Jak’s face was in front of his own. Bizarrely, and in a way that he couldn’t explain, it seemed to merge with the rock that should have been there.
Dr. Theophilus Tanner was a man who was no stranger to madness. He recognized it. In the same way, as strange as this situation was, he knew that it was not insanity. On the contrary, it made perfect sense. His own belief in the power of the intelligence that created this illusion was now helping it to keep up that very thing. As a result, the only way for it to end, and for him to be saved, was…
“Hit me,” he said to Jak. It came out cracked and barely audible, but it was enough. Jak looked into Doc’s eyes, and even if he couldn’t phrase exactly what he saw, he grasped it on an instinctive level. He pulled back his free hand and hit out. Even with the resistance, real or imagined, that the rock provided, he was still able to muster enough power to connect with Doc’s jaw hard enough for it to make the lights go out behind Doc’s eyes. The whites showed as they rolled up into his head, and he slumped toward the ground.
A ground that was now solid and unencumbered by the illusion of a wall of rock. It was as if, without Doc’s belief—a belief that he had tried his hardest to deny but had, paradoxically, only reinforced by so doing—the intelligence that had formed the defense had nothing on which to build.
Ryan whistled softly. He turned and looked around at the other three, who were a few yards behind him. Krysty was still hunkered on the ground, while J.B. and Mildred had huddled together, perhaps unconsciously. Their eyes were fixed at a point beyond him; beyond even where Jak stood over Doc’s inert frame, bending over him in solicitation now that the necessary force had been exerted.
Beyond the area where the rock wall had seemingly been, there was an expanse of bare and arid land, scorched and blasted by the hot winds of the nukecaust and still enough of a hot spot for little other than some shriveled shrub to have prospered in the intervening years. And beyond this, where the land rose slightly in level until it formed a ragged lip, there was another chasm. It was a deep, wide split in the earth that extended for hundreds of yards. The shadowed contour of the rock face forming the far wall of the chasm could be plainly seen. It was a gash in the earth that ran in an irregular line, widening and then narrowing along its path. Unlike the earlier illusion, this had the random look of nature, and didn’t veer off at strange angles from the periphery of vision. Unlike the previous chasm, and the mountainous wall, this had dust disturbed in eddies and whorls by the air currents that were stirred by the depths of what was, Ryan was certain, a canyon.
And, with a sinking feeling in his gut, he could have sworn he knew which one.
“Is that one real?” J.B. asked hesitantly.
Ryan swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and nodded.
“Yeah, that one’s the real deal.”
There was something in his tone that made Mildred look at him askance. “You sound certain,” she murmured.
“Makes sense now,” he said cryptically, shrugging. “I never really believed all those stories, but the look of that…and what’s happened to us.”
“Mancos Canyon,” Krysty said softly. “I’d always figured that those stories were just that…not that there was any truth in them.”
Jak turned back so that he was facing her. His brow was furrowed.
“Stories?” he queried.
“I fear I am with you on this one,” Doc agreed. “You speak of these as though they are common knowledge. Perhaps to you. But not to everyone.”
“Sorry, Doc,” Ryan said absently. “It’s just that they were the kinds of tales that you spin around the fire at night, on watches, to stop yourself falling asleep unless you wanted nightmares.”
J.B. walked past the one-eyed man and looked to the split in the earth that lay in front of them. He took off his fedora and scratched his head, lost for a moment in thought. Then, without looking around, he said, “Mancos, eh? Rumors have always swirled about that place.”
Doc was becoming a little exasperated, and it was reflected in his tone. “This is all very well, but if there is some legend attached to this place that may, perhaps, have some bearing on what we are about to face, then I think that you should tell those of us who are not privy to the knowledge. It would, after all, help.”
“I don’t know if you could dignify it with the word legend,” Krysty began reflectively. “The region got blasted in the nukecaust. So hot that no one could go near it for generations. But along the way there were those who wandered off the tracks and ended up here. Now mebbe you’d think that anyone who did that would end up as shriveled as an old man’s dick that had been left out in the sun too long. If you did, then you’d be wrong. Most who disappeared into this region were never seen again. Those who were, well, when they were seen again, those who knew them said they were…different.”
The way in which she let that last word hang in the air made Mildred shiver. Different in what way? she wondered. More to the point was another thought, to which she gave voice.
“So you’re telling me that we’re headed into an area that is full of nukeshit still, and from which people either don’t come back, or if they do they’re not even recognizable to their friends?”
“Something like that,” Krysty said in a tone that managed to be both flat and grim at the same time.
Mildred whistled. “Sounds like we’re in for a real fun time.”
“Quite,” Doc added quickly. “But I think the real question for me is, in what way changed? Are we to expect that we will become in some way infected by radiation and covered with sores and distortion of the features? Or will we somehow develop some kind of mutation?”
“Like the ones that you think nearly caused you to buy the farm?” Krysty countered. There was an edge of hostility in her voice. “You think that because it’s evil then it must be mutie traits? You think that’s why these people—the ones who were seen again—were so changed?”
“My dear, I do not know,” Doc said mildly. “That is the sole reason that I ask. Being mutie is not itself a bad thing. You must surely know me well enough by now to know that I would not countenance such a thought. But it would require a kind of power that is only possessed by those who are muties to achieve the things we have seen.”
Krysty gave a short, barking laugh. “Guess you’re right about that, Doc. Mebbe that’s why I’m getting so bastard defensive. Doomie sense is one thing, but this is more than that. Far more.”
Mildred had moved forward so that she was standing next to J.B. “So what was it about those who returned that had changed?” she asked.
Krysty thought about that for a moment before answering.
“They had a darkness all around them. Not just in the way that their attitude to people they had known had changed. They seemed to relate to everything and everyone in a different manner. Even dogs didn’t like them. Come to think of it, that’s a good way to describe it. It was like they looked at those around them in the same way that everyone else looked at dogs.”
“Another step up the evolutionary ladder, another link in the evolutionary chain,” Doc mused almost to himself. “That is an interesting idea. Before the proliferation of fools tampering with nukes, and then the nukecaust itself did nothing more than prove the random nature of nature itself, there was an idea that those who had what we call mutie powers were some kind of preliminary breakthrough to the next step of humanity. So maybe, if those who wander this way survive and are changed by that which lies ahead of us now, maybe they feel that kind of superiority.”
“I’ll tell you what really worries me,” Mildred added softly. “What if the reason they think that is because someone or something is telling them that? Where does that leave us?”
“Up to our necks in shit,” Ryan stated succinctly. “That wouldn’t be the first time.”
“You know, we can sit here and wonder all we want, but the only way we’re really going to find out is if we go and have a look for ourselves,” J.B. said with a faraway tone that was reflective of the way in which he was looking to the horizon, and the gaping maw that split the land in front of it.
Ryan shrugged. His old friend was right, of course. They began the march toward what they hoped would be a real answer to all the questions that were bubbling inside them.
One thing was obvious from the start: whatever intelligence had been working on them, and however it had worked, that was now at an end. The land where the illusory rock carapace had stood was proof enough of this on its own. Where the land that had led up to it had seemed smooth and unmarked, now they could see that the land behind them was marked with tracks that were obviously other than their own—obvious because they now stretched across the space that had seemingly been taken up by rock before, and beyond that across the land leading toward the lip of the canyon.
J.B. looked up at the sky. There was some cloud cover, but it was high and thin, barely more than a haze in places. And hardly moving as it drifted slowly across the scorching sun. Down below, where they wearily and warily trudged across the hard-packed dirt, there was no movement at all in the air. It was still. Perhaps it had been that way for most of the time since the first scouring winds of skydark had cleared the land and left it to chill. Then, as his eyes scanned from the skies down to ground level, he could see the immutable proof of the land’s still nature. The ground ahead of them was crisscrossed by trails. Some were made by human feet, others by the hooves of pack animals. Although it took a moment for the fact to sink in, he also realized that there were no wag or bike traces among the paths that had been trudged across the loose dirt. Maybe that said that the way down into the canyon—where, presumably, some kind of life was possible—was too narrow and precarious for such luxuries.
One thing was for sure: the tracks had been made over a long period of time. There was a massive amount of overlap, where one trail was crossed, often many times, by others. Some were ground deep into the dirt, impacted by repetition so that they ran deeper. But as the land around here was so arid, none seemed to have been baked into mud. Instead, they rested precariously on loose soil that should have made them things of an ephemeral nature. Their longevity said much for the bizarre conditions of the region.
And now they were adding to them. It would be simple for anyone to see where they had been, and where they were going, if they wanted to follow in their wake. But even as the thought occurred to Ryan, he realized that not only was there no place to hide out here on the flat, but whoever lived in the canyon would already know of their presence either because they had been alerted by the defenses…or because they were the defenses.
