The question had been asked in jest, but at that moment he knew he spoke the truth. Once more Jeremiah had reached into his thoughts, and the cat was agreeing in the way he could best express himself.
Nick’s hand slipped gently Under the jaw, urged Jeremiah’s head up, so he could meet those wide eyes straightly. “How much do you know—understand—Jeremiah?”
The cat’s reaction was swift and sharp. A paw flashed up, claws raked across Nick’s wrist. He jerked back. Plainly he had taken an unallowable liberty. There was a warning growl and Jeremiah once more mouthed the bird, pushed around Nick, and vanished into the cave. Again Nick was left unable to judge what was the truth, what imagination. He must ask Linda about Lung—did the Peke also give her the impression that here he was able to communicate if he wished?
He was still staring after Jeremiah when Lady Diana scrambled up.
“Anything to report?” she asked directly.
“Nothing except Jeremiah coming back with a big bird.”
“That cat! Maude is right under his paw, which is where every cat wants you. Though I will admit he seems able to sniff out any of the People—”
“The Herald, too?” Nick asked.
She studied him. “What about the Herald?” There was a hostile note in her voice.
“Does Jeremiah know when he is around?”
“Now that”—his question appeared to be a surprise—“I don’t know. He can point out one of the People whether we see them at first or not. But the Herald—Why are you so interested?”
“It would seem he’s such good security, I just wondered.”
“Ask Maude, she knows everything knowable about that animal. Your food is waiting, you had better get to it before it’s cold.”
“Yes, m’lady!” Nick sketched a half-salute, giving her the address Stroud used, and scrambled down into the cave entrance so well masked by the jumble of rocks.
He found Linda on K.P. duty. Mrs. Clapp was some distance away, Jeremiah’s trophy laid across one knee, stroking the cat’s head and telling him what a brave, smart boy he was. Jeremiah accepted this praise complacently, with a feline’s estimate of his own worth.
Nick picked up a bowl and went to where Linda was stirring a pot sitting on a pier of stones over the fire. Lung was beside her, his head cocked a little to one side, apparently intent on watching the flames.
“Linda, have you noticed anything different about Lung?”
“Lung?” She had taken Nick’s bowl to fill it from the pot. But she turned her head quickly to look down at the small dog. “What’s the matter? Lung?”
At his name he sat up on his haunches, waving both small forepaws in the air, and gave a soft bark.
“Has—” Now that Nick was prepared to ask his question it sounded improbable. He could have imagined Jeremiah’s response. No, he had not! Gathering courage from that, he continued. “Has Lung given you the impression that he understands—well, what you are thinking?”
“What I am thinking?” she echoed. Now she turned her attention from the Peke to Nick. “No,” she said as if to herself. “You really mean that, don’t you? I told you—Pekes have a very high intelligence. He could always make me understand things—”
“That’s not what I meant—” began Nick when she interrupted.
“I know. You mean—like telepathy, don’t you? Why do you ask? Has Lung been reading your mind?” She might have asked that derisively, but he thought her tone was rather one of deep interest.
“No. But I think that Jeremiah has.”
“Jeremiah!” Linda gazed beyond the fire at the cat curled up now at Mrs. Clapp’s feet, and her expression was not altogether approving. “They keep telling me, Jean and Mrs. Clapp, about how wonderful that cat is, how he can let them know when there’s any of the People around, or a bad influence, or something like that. You’d think he was a marvel. Now you come and tell me that he can read minds! I think you’re all crazy!”
“But,” Nick persisted, “have you tried finding out if there is any change in Lung?”
“You mean there might be something in this place that does produce mind reading and all that? But why not us, then, instead of the animals?”
“I don’t know.” He had to answer with the truth.
“Lung.” Linda shoved the filled bowl into Nick’s hands. Her attention was on the Peke. “Lung—”
The dog gave another soft bark, put his front paws on her knee as she sat down cross-legged and held out her hands to him. Gathering him up, she held him as Nick had seen her do before, with those bulbous dark eyes on a level with her own. “Lung, can you read my mind?”
Nick watched them. Was she serious with that question, or was it a jeer aimed at him?
Linda was silent, staring intently into the Peke’s eyes. The dog made a dart with his head, his tongue went out to lick her chin. The girl gave a muffled exclamation, pulled him tightly against her until he woofed in protest.
“You—you are right. Lung knows.”
“How can you tell?” Nick demanded. Now all his own objections to such a belief came to life again. He did not want confirmation, he realized, he wanted denial.
“I know.” She did not enlarge on that. “Nick—we have to get away—back home!”
She sounded so afraid Nick was once more startled. It was as if during that long moment of confrontation with Lung she had learned something that made her whole world unsafe.
“We can’t very well leave now,” he pointed out. “You know as well as I do what we’d run into out there.”
“They—” Linda’s voice became a whisper. “Their plan for hiding out here—Nick—that can’t go on much longer. The food is very low. And as for going downriver on a raft—” The note in her voice underlined her honest opinion of that. “Nick, whatever, whoever is chasing all the drifters we’ve seen, it’s got to be something everyone has good reason to fear. If we just stay on here—Nick, we can’t!”
Those were his own thoughts put into words. But would she accept his only other suggestion—the city?
“Nick, if we went back—right back to where we were when it all began, do you think we could get back to our own world?”
He shook his head. “There was a history of disappearances in our world for a long time—and no returns. It could not be for want of trying, I’m sure of that.”
She leaned forward so her cheek was against the Peke’s soft fur. Her hair was tied back with the red yarn still, but a piece of it was loose enough to fall over her eyes like a half veil.
“Nick, I’m scared! I’m scared the worst I’ve ever been in my life.”
“I think we all are. I know I am.” He matched her frankness. “But we’ve got to hold on. I think here, if you lose your grip, you’re really lost.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m the most afraid of now, Nick. They—Jean—Mrs. Clapp, Lady Diana—they all seem to be able to take it and it doesn’t matter. Mrs. Clapp—she’s old and thinks that this is like a test of her belief that being good will help a person. She’s talked to me about it. And Lady Diana, all her life she’s been fighting for things—Mrs. Clapp told me about her, too. She’s done a lot for the village where she lived. She sort of bullies people into doing what they should. I can’t imagine her being afraid. And Jean—you know, Nick, she’s in love with Barry. As long as she’s near him and all’s right as far as he is concerned, then she doesn’t care about anything else. All that hurts her is that he still wants Rita—
“But not one of them is afraid the way I am. And, Nick, I’m so afraid I am going to break wide open, and then all of them will despise me.” Her head sank lower and the lock of hair now hid most of her features.
“Not one of them will!” Nick tried to find the right words. “You’re wrong, Linda. If you could read minds, I’d swear to it you’d find every one of them has a limit of control. Maybe they haven’t reached it yet—but it’s there. You’re hinting we ought to go by ourselves? But we have a better chance of sticking
it out here, at least for now.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed dully. “But I wish—No, I can’t let myself wish, can I? I have to accept what’s here and now and go on from there. But, Nick, we can’t possibly stay here and starve. What can we do?”
Before he could control his tongue he answered: “There’s the city—”
“The city? What do you mean?”
“That’s really safe—at least from the saucers. We saw that proven.” Now he was driven to get her reaction to his half-plan. “Suppose we could get into the city—”
“We can, easily enough. Accept the Herald’s bargain, as Rita did. But, Nick, the way they talk about that—there must be something terrible happens when you do.”
“Not the bargain, Linda. But suppose we were able to follow the Herald in somehow. Or, get out of him how to do it.” Nick’s plan was still only a suggestion to which his thoughts continued to turn.
“I don’t believe you could.” Linda replied so flatly he was momentarily deflated. Then he reacted to the deflation as swiftly, with the determination that he would at least try. But he would not give her the satisfaction of a protest. Instead he started eating.
“Are you going to try something like that?” His silence appeared to irritate her.
Nick shrugged. “How can I? At the present time I don’t see any chance.”
“Of course not! And there never was!” With that parting shot she arose and walked over to join Mrs. Clapp who was plucking the feathers from Jeremiah’s addition to their larder.
Nick finished the stew, washed his bowl in the dribble of water that came out of the wall in one of the small alcoves cut in the cave, a dribble that found its way out again along a trough chiseled in the floor. But he set the bowl down there and did not return to the center portion of the cave. Instead he edged along through a narrow slit Crocker had earlier pointed out, one indeed too narrow for Stroud to negotiate, which led to another cave and a passage, and finally a very narrow opening on the world.
Just now Nick wanted no company, rather a chance to think without interruption. He had a puzzle. Perhaps it could not be solved, perhaps it could. But it must be faced and struggled with.
Nick worked his way up to that slit opening on the world. But, as he placed his hand on the side of the opening to steady himself, earth and a stone gave way under his weight. He snapped on the flash from his belt and under its bright light he could see where other stones had been rammed in to close an opening once much larger. Those stones were no longer so well bedded, they could be worked out with a little effort.
He began to pick and pull, laying the flashlight on a projection of the wall to give him light. The barrier needed only a little loosening. He would crawl out to prove that and then wall it up more securely.
Nick thrust with his shoulders, kicked and wriggled. Then he was out. It was only in that moment when he had achieved his purpose that he became aware of more than the action that had absorbed him. Crouched, his hands on the ground, his back hunched, he looked down the slope.
A cloud shielded the brilliance of the sun. But it could not dim the splash of color there. As he slowly rose to his feet, Nick saw he had his perhaps dangerous wish. It was the Herald.
10
Nick’s first impulse was to dodge back into the cave. But it was already too late for that. He knew the Herald had sighted him. And he did not want to reveal even more this back door to the cave. Nick moved farther into the open to face the alien.
To his eyes this was the same Herald he had seen riding over the ridge to the city. The man (if man he really was) matched him in height, though his body was more slender than Nick’s. His green breeches and undercoat were dulled by the brilliance of the stiff tabard with its wealth of color and glittering embroidery.
The tabard was divided into four quarters, each of which bore a different intricate device. Over each shoulder was a small half-cape with the same designs repeated in miniature. His four-pointed cap, beneath which his hair was so sleeked against his head as to appear painted on his skull, was stiffened by a band of gold like a small crown circlet.
His face was expressionless, impassive, and his skin very white so that the bracketing of moustaches about his mouth might have been drawn in ink. He did not move at once, but before Nick was more than three or four strides from the hole he was on his way to meet him, his walk an effortless glide.
Thus they came face to face with only an arm’s length between them. And in all that time the Herald kept silent, nor did his set, smooth expression change. When he did speak it was startling, as if a painted puppet had been given a voice.
“I am Avalon.”
There was a pause that he did not break. Nick gathered it was his turn for self-introduction.
“I am Nicholas Shaw.” He stated his name formally, sensing the occasion demanded that.
The Herald made a slight inclination with his head.
“To that which is of Avalon, and of Tara, of Brocéliande, of Carnac, may you be welcome, Nicholas Shaw, if it be of your own will and choice that this be so.”
So, this was it, the stating of the bargain. Nick thought furiously—he must stall, try to learn all he could without giving a quick denial. But to play such a game with this stranger would, he was sure, be very difficult.
“This is not a land to make one welcome.” He sought for words that might in return bring some of the answers he wanted. “I have seen things here that are dangers past my own world’s knowing.” Even as he spoke he felt a faint surprise at his choice of words. It was as if he tried to speak a foreign language, yet they were of his own tongue, merely ones he would not naturally have selected.
“This is a land of strangers. Those who accept the land will find that it accepts them, and there are, then, not the perils you have seen.”
“And the manner of this acceptance?”
Avalon slipped his hand beneath the stiff front of his tabard. He withdrew it, holding a small box, which he snapped open. The box was round, and nested in it was a single fruit, a golden apple, gold that is for the most part, but with a beginning blush of red on one side. From it, or the box that cradled it, came an aroma to entice the sense of smell, as it also enticed the eyes.
“Of this you eat, for it is of Avalon. Thus Avalon enters into you and you are a part of it, even as it is a part of you. Having so taken Avalon, you are a freeman of all it has to offer.”
“I have been told”—Nick was cautious but hopeful of perhaps gaining a shred of answer—“that if one does this thing, becomes of Avalon, one is then apart from one’s past, no longer the person one was before—”
Still the Herald’s expression did not alter. “One makes choices, and each choice changes one a little. This is the way of life, one cannot avoid it. If you fear what Avalon has to offer, then you make one choice, and by that you must abide. There are those who will not become a part of the land, thereby the land rejects them, and they shall have no good of it, nor any peace.”
“There is peace then in Avalon?” Nick tried to get disbelief into his tone. “What I have seen here suggests that is not so. I have watched men entrapped by others, I have seen wanderers who cannot claim any portion of this world for home.”
“It was their choice to reject Avalon, therefore Avalon rejects them. They remain rootless, shelterless. And the day approaches when they shall find that, without roots, shelter, they are utterly lost.”
“Those truly of Avalon will turn against them?” Nick demanded. Was what he had just heard a threat or a warning?
“There is no need. Avalon is no man’s enemy. It is a place of peace and safety. But if one remains without, then comes darkness and ill. This has happened before, the evil lapping at the land. Where it meets Avalon and Tara, Brocéliande and Carnac, then it laps against walls it cannot overflow. But for those without those walls there is peril beyond reckoning. Alternately that evil flows and ebbs. This is a time of the beginning of the flow.”
“Is it
this evil that brings such as me into Avalon in the first place?”
“Such questions are not for my answering, stranger. Accept of Avalon and you will understand.”
“I cannot decide right now—” Nick fenced.
Again the Herald inclined his head. “That is understood, for your race are not of controlled thought. Clear decisions come hard for you. I shall see you again.”
He closed the box, put it once more under his tabard, and turned from Nick, gliding away at such a pace Nick could not have matched unless he broke into a jog. But he was determined to follow, at least a little way. The Herald was not mounted, surely Nick could trail him—
With only that idea in mind Nick pushed through bushes, trying to keep in sight the blaze of that tabard. Meanwhile he thought about what Avalon had said. Apparently he called himself by the name of the land as if he were its official spokesman, identifying himself wholly with it. And had he threatened, or merely stated, that some great danger lay ahead for all those who were not protected by the People?
The mass migration of the drifters gave part proof. And what Nick had witnessed of the attacks from the saucers underlined the safety of the Herald and his city. On the other hand there was the manifest horror of his offer that the English displayed, though their reasons still seemed vague to Nick.
It was all—
Nick halted. The blaze of color had also stopped. Nick ducked into a bush. There was someone rising out of similar cover to confront the Herald, holding on high a pole topped with a cross of dull metal.
“Demon!” The figure used the cross-pole as a club, seeking to bring it down on the Herald’s head. But Avalon was not there to take the force of that blow. Instead his body was well to one side. Again that wild figure, wearing a tattered and mud-bespattered brown robe, with gray hair matted about his head and a beard of the same on his jaw, tried to do battle. This time the Herald vanished from sight.
“Stay!”
From behind Nick came a gust of foul odor, with a sharp prick in his mid-back to reinforce the order. A moment later the same voice called, in a thick gabble he could not understand, some summons.