It was dusk before the rain stopped. Merlin emerged from the doorway timidly. The wind was much stronger and fairly howled along the street.
Chilled to the bone by an icy gust, she looked around at the darkening city uncertainly, deciding she was less concerned with hunger than with finding a way to keep warm.
The mechanical voice of her memory comfortingly assured her that human beings were capable of surviving long periods without food, but could die overnight of exposure.
Quite suddenly, she felt a different kind of chill.
Someone or something was watching her.
Merlin stared around with dread. She felt eyes boring into her and knew she was not alone in the crumbling city. The thousand gaping windows stared down at her.
She swallowed and took a step backwards, her legs stiff with terror.
Shelter or no shelter, exposure or not, night in the terrible dead city no longer seemed any sort of solution. She turned and walked quickly back the way she had come, conscious of the wet crunching noises her feet made in the quiet.
The faint dusk sunlight had almost faded as she reached the treeline again but she sighed with relief.
Only then did she look back, but the city was no more than a dark shape in the night.
3
She was being followed.
As if triggered by her unease, the inner whisperer spoke again. ‘They watch me. I wonder if they suspect the truth . . .’
‘Shut up,’ Merlin hissed, unnerved.
Ever since leaving the deserted city, she had been hearing things – the rustle of leaves, the sound of a small branch falling to the ground, something other than the scurrying departure of little animals. She knew she would be defenseless if whoever or whatever had watched her in the city decided to follow and attack. Now that it was night, she felt even more vulnerable.
She remembered seeing wild deer in an enclosure at the zoo. The animals had been unafraid of the people filing past their enclosure because experience told them they would not be attacked. But the small animals she had not managed to catch a glimpse of in the wilderness behaved as if they were accustomed to being hunted. And perhaps whatever hunted them, was now after her.
Merlin walked carefully trying not to make any noise, but the forest was now unnaturally quiet. This made her more afraid than ever. She tried stopping unexpectedly to see if she could detect footsteps behind her, but there was nothing except the endless, mocking gibber of the wind in the branches.
Yet she could not rid herself of the certainty that she was being followed.
It was very dark when the sun first set, but at length a full moon rose, shedding a clear silvery light. Merlin was little cheered by this. Exhausted, she knew she would have to stop soon to rest, if nothing else. Then she would be easy prey.
Her eyelids were drooping heavily and she was almost stumbling, asleep on her feet, when she heard the distinct sound of twigs snapping behind her.
She froze, suddenly as wide awake as if someone had thrown ice water over her. Her heart thundered in her throat, nearly suffocating her. Sick with fright, she knelt and took up a lump of stone from the ground to defend herself.
She stood facing in the direction she had heard the footstep, willing herself to stop shaking, schooling her expression.
There was nothing for a long, eerie moment, then the faint sound of leaves being brushed aside. Merlin swallowed, trying to will saliva into her parched mouth. The hairs on the back of her neck stook up on end and she stared into the shadows challengingly, fighting off paralysing terror.
‘Who . . . who’s there?’ she called. There was no answer but the subtle commentary of the wind’s passage.
Merlin relaxed slowly, her terror ebbing away. She looked at the stone wryly, cursing her imagination.
‘You’d be easy prey even with that rock,’ said a voice directly behind.
Merlin stumbled sideways in her haste to turn around, her heart leaping in her chest so violently she thought she would have a heart attack.
A youth of about sixteen was standing less than a metre away, leaning in the inky shadow of a thick-waisted tree, watching her.
Shock gave way to a rush of fury. ‘Why did you sneak up behind me!’ she shouted, hurting her raw throat.
The youth straightened up with casual grace and came closer.
Merlin gaped as she saw him in the full moonlight.
He was tall and lean, wearing nothing more than a loin cloth and a leather belt. In one hand he held what looked like a crude crossbow. Slung over one shoulder was a pouch containing arrows and two long furry-looking animal carcasses.
With his dark, dirty skin, bare feet and coarse brown hair falling over broad, thickly muscled shoulders to his waist in unkempt coils, he resembled a dirty young Tarzan.
Merlin repressed an hysterical giggle and resisted the urge to retreat as he peered into her face. His own face up close was heavily marked and one ragged scar ran right over his left eye giving him a permanent lopsided wink.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, her voice a rusty whisper.
‘My name is William,’ whispered the voice inside her mind shyly, and for a second, she thought the youth had spoken.
‘Not so fast,’ he answered softly. ‘Names are not things to be bandied around like chunks of burnt meat. You are the stranger here.’ He tilted his head, staring at her out of one gleaming eye, the rest of his face in shadow.
‘I followed you from the old place. What did you go there for?’ he asked, resting his bowless hand on the hilt of a small axe stuck through his belt. Merlin licked her lips nervously, as her inner advisor reminded her that humans were as dangerous, if not more so, than wild animals. And the youth looked half wild anyway.
‘Old place?’ she stammered.
He lifted his hand to point and Merlin flinched, thinking he meant to strike her. His teeth flashed white in a smile at her involuntary movement. A slow burning anger licked at the edges of fear.
‘Back there. The place of Babel where the wind lives,’ he said.
The mechanical voice said: ‘The tower of Babel was a mythical tower whose construction was interfered with by the gods.’
Merlin realised the youth meant the deserted city. She could not help wondering at the way he talked. Perhaps he was part of an isolated religious sect that lived in the wilderness.
Her mind obligingly offered a variety of religious orders, but the youth seemed not to fit into any of them.
‘Why did you go there?’ she asked, reluctant to display her ignorance.
Again his teeth flashed whitely. ‘You are a tricksy one. Question for question is it, then? Is this the new way clanfolk meet?’
Merlin said nothing. Inside her mind, the voice she now called the William voice said: ‘I do not believe the clanfolk are stupid or dull or even savages. They are simply a primitive culture, and they will mature . . . if they are allowed . . .’
‘All right. Question for question,’ the youth announced, taking her silence for an answer. ‘And answer for answer. I went there for knowledge. You do not believe me?’ he asked quickly, defensive. ‘The wind hears all the secrets men and women whisper. I go there to listen to the voices on the wind.’ He lifted his brows interrogatingly.
Merlin swallowed, still unwilling to mention her memory loss. But some answer was required. ‘I was curious,’ she said at last.
He nodded. ‘I, too, the first time. But once you go there, you will always go back. The Babel place takes a piece of you as barter for your intrusion. That stolen piece draws you back.’ He sighed. ‘Sometimes I think I am bewitched.’
Suddenly he leaned near again, staring at her head. ‘Your hair! What happened to it?’ He sounded shocked. Merlin lifted a self-conscious hand to her head.
‘What’s the matter with it?’
‘What’s wrong? It’s cut,’ he said.
Merlin wondered when it had become a crime to cut hair. Some instinct of privacy made her glad the collar of her tunic
concealed the chain and collar she wore.
‘Only the Citizen gods cut hair,’ the youth went on. His voice was suspicious and an alarm bell clanged in Merlin’s head.
‘It was burned,’ she said quickly.
The youth tilted his head and stared at her critically. ‘Makes you look like one of them,’ he said darkly.
‘It is us against them,’ the William voice whispered urgently. ‘I must take care they don’t guess what I am doing . . .’
‘Them . . .’ Merlin echoed. She could not think of a way to ask who ‘they’ were without having to first explain her amnesia.
‘Ford,’ he said shortly.
Merlin stared wildly. Did he mean he had a car nearby?
‘What are you called?’ he asked pointedly.
‘Your name is Merlin . . .’ the William voice husked.
She realised Ford was the youth’s name. ‘Merlin,’ she said hastily, glad there was at least one easy answer.
‘Funny sort of name,’ he observed.
What about yours? Merlin thought indignantly.
‘So where do you come from, then?’ he asked.
Merlin searched for a noncomittal answer. ‘Near the sea,’ she said at last.
Ford looked interested. ‘Really? But I suppose you did not come so far alone. Conclave is only two days away. A good time to join us, eh?’ he asked ironically, as if she had made a sly joke.
Merlin nodded, wondering what he was talking about, and who she was meant to be joining, and what a Conclave was.
Where am I? she wondered desperately. This was something more than an experiment gone wrong. What had happened to the world?
‘I haven’t quite made up my mind about joining,’ she said into the lengthening silence.
Ford burst out laughing. ‘What else will you do? You can’t go back. Too late for regrets now.’
‘We’d better find a sleeping place,’ he added purposefully. He yawned widely, then bent to retrieve his bow. ‘Too far to go to the Hide tonight.’ He turned his back and set off at a brisk pace. He had gone a few steps before he looked over his shoulder at Merlin, who had not moved. ‘Come on, then!’ he called.
Merlin hurried after him, not sure whether to be relieved that she was no longer alone. Nothing Ford said had made the slightest sense to her. Either he was retarded – but he did not sound half-witted – or she really was in some other country. But it was a country with customs she had never heard of.
‘Pity you didn’t come sooner,’ Ford said absently. ‘One of Sear’s old traps netted a Citizen gods’ flier. I wish I had seen it,’ he added regretfully.
Merlin was glad he had not looked at her as he spoke. She realised incredulously that Ford and someone called Sear were the saboteurs the searchers had mentioned. That meant she was on her way to the camp of the scatterlings. This seemed a less promising development than she had imagined in the face of Ford’s primitive appearance. What sort of help could a group of savages offer her? She decided again to say nothing of her amnesia, or of her presence in the wrecked flier, until she was able to judge what help Ford’s people were capable of giving her. And how they would react to her story.
Her unease stemmed partly from fear of appearing ignorant and partly from the odd mixture of naivety and savagery in Ford. He had sounded proud of the accident, careless that it had caused the dreadful death of the driver. He was so sure she was some sort of runaway come to join his gang. What would he do if he found he had made a mistake? The vast difference between Ford and Andrew’s technologically advanced people confused her. She wondered why Ford called the searchers ‘Citizen gods’.
‘Does the cut pain you?’ Ford asked, seeming to sense her mental turmoil.
Merlin shook her head hastily, wondering what medication he would offer. ‘I . . . fell,’ she said lamely, touching her forehead.
He made no comment. To her heartfelt relief, they did not walk far. The ground began to undulate gently and Ford called a halt in a deepish depression with a flat grassy bottom. Hooking his bow and arrow pouch from a tree branch extended over the crevice, he pulled the axe from his belt and tested its sharpness with a deft thumb.
Merlin stared at him apprehensively until he took up one of the carcasses. Seeing that he was about to gut them, she backed away hastily.
‘I’ll get some wood for the fire,’ she offered.
Ford looked at her quizzically. ‘You’re bold enough or maybe stupid. A fire away from the Hide is a deathbond,’ he said with the air of quoting a proverb. ‘But maybe you’re right. The Citizen gods will be too busy collecting their dead to be out hunting tonight, and a fire would be a fine thing.’
Hunt? Merlin thought. Did the Citizen gods hunt the scatterlings?
Ford bent to his grisly task and Merlin hurried off into the trees, wondering if he had intended them to eat the meat raw. Revolted at the notion, she took her time collecting twigs and dead wood, feeling for the driest wood automatically. When her arms were full and she was certain the skinning and gutting process would be over, she went back.
‘You took your time,’ Ford said mildly. He took the wood from her and set it up for a fire before taking two stones carefully from a small pouch hanging at his waist. He struck them together sharply, letting the resultant sparks fall onto a feathery curl of grass which began to smoke. Setting down the flint stones, he bent close to the ground and blew until the spark became a minute flame which was transferred swiftly to the pile of sticks.
Merlin wondered why he did not use a match.
In a short time, a small fire crackled between them, flinging orange sparks into the starry sky. The meat was laid across the fire in strips and a delicious smell filled the air. Merlin forced away the memory of the other roasting flesh, and her belly rumbled loudly.
Looking wilder than ever in the leaping glow of the flames, Ford grinned at her engagingly. ‘Hungry, eh? How come none of you runaways ever think to bring food?’
The meat was burned on the outside and almost raw in the middle, but Merlin ate every piece that was offered to her, amazed at how good it tasted. There was no talk while they ate.
She was replete first and sat back with a sigh. She studied Ford curiously across the fire thinking it was impossible to tell his racial background from his features – a slight upward slant to his eyes made him look Spanish or Portuguese. Thick long black lashes and slashing dark brows; high, sharp cheekbones and a full lower lip completed the picture of someone with mixed ancestry. His skin was darker than hers, and the firelight tinted his eyes an unusual shade of yellow. She wondered what colour they were in the daylight. He was dirty, and clearly expert at living off the land, but off what land? She debated asking him what country they were in, but decided against it. The thing that really puzzled her was his speech and accent which were exactly the same as hers, and as the Citizen gods’.
Her thoughts struck a chord in her patchwork memory and the William voice spoke: ‘You are strange, yet you are no monster. You are not grotesque, only different . . .’
Different how? Merlin wondered. Then she pushed the question away, refusing to let it distract her.
She was becoming adept at ignoring the constant interruptions from the inner voices. Yet she felt more confused than ever at her own state. Each time she learned something new, it seemed to increase her overall lack of comprehension. She had clung grimly to the notion that there was an explanation for all the strangeness.
But now, that belief was fading.
She was staring into the flames when she felt herself watched. Glancing up, she found Ford staring at her. Unperturbed, he went on staring until she shifted uncomfortably.
‘All right, we’ll talk then,’ he said. ‘Is it true that the people from the Seaside Regions ride on the waves on boards?’
Surfing, Merlin thought incredulously. He’s asking me about surfing!
‘Surfing is a sport . . .’ the mechanical voice began pedantically, but Merlin repressed it, aware Ford would go on qu
estioning her unless she forestalled him.
‘The Citizens will be angry about the flier,’ she said carefully.
Diverted, Ford burst into uninhibited laughter. ‘Yes, yes! They will know who did it. And they will search for us, but they will not find us.’ He grinned wolfishly into the flames. ‘They will learn not to think of us as easy prey. Then let them fear for their forbidden city.’
‘City?’ Merlin echoed.
Ford nodded eagerly, his half-closed eye giving him a mocking air. ‘Few have seen it, but I will take you there when it is safe. The scatterlings do not fear the wrath or rules of the Citizen gods.’ He shook his head. ‘The monstrous bubble which covers the forbidden city is a strange, splendid sight. I have dared to go close and press my face against it, and it is hard like a rock and cold as a stone from the bottom of a stream. Only this close it is possible to see the forbidden city within, which is a sister to the Babel place. But it is dark and cold and no sun shines on it. I do not like it as much.’
Merlin said nothing, completely confounded. A city under a bubble – a dome? A bizzare notion occurred to her. Perhaps she had been put into suspended animation. It seemed ludicrous to think of being preserved like a pickle or a frozen pea, but trying to find rational explanations had only led her deeper into a labyrinth of confusion. Maybe she had been used as a subject and had woken years and years later. That might explain why she did not remember anything about the world. Perhaps Andrew and his people had resurrected her and had chained her in case she reacted violently. That would explain why a long-dead city was familiar and why nothing Ford said made any sense.
Common sense rebelled at the outlandish idea, yet it was oddly persuasive because it seemed to explain so many things: the domed city, radiation suits and fliers, all of which sounded like the ingredients of a futuristic science-fiction novel.
‘You might even see one of them,’ Ford said, breaking into her speculations.
Merlin blinked at him stupidly.
‘The Citizen gods,’ he said impatiently. ‘We caught one of them once. Stripped of those shiny skins they wear, he was white as the cooked flesh of a chooken.’ He shook his head, apparently disappointed in her lack of reaction. Merlin was trying to work out whether he meant chicken, rather than chooken.