To Challenge Chaos, page 7
Donna was the sort of cardboard character who had no real right to exist. She was not wholly believable and was unfortunately conscious of the fact. Had she been stupid, she might never have looked into a mirror with a critical eye or never cared if she had. She might have been a very successful nobody, living and dying without ever making any impression on the universe of which she had been a part.
In some strange way she had been cast—or had cast herself—in the role her body and mind had been design for. Chance made a heroine, and fate made use of the fact. Fate sent her to Chaos X with a mission to fulfill and made her the heroine of this story.
—12. Donna Teredo as a child, full of self-pity. It was the mask that was to cross her face as they came through the gateway to blackside, but that was a little unfair. In twelve years Donna overcame much of her self-pity, and it was by no means the ruling influence it once had been when she crossed the mountains.
Children are given to stronger, more consuming emotions but usually short-lived ones. Donna’s self-pity was not so very short-lived.
—8. Donna Teredo, a young woman, still full of self pity. She pitied her own mediocrity. She had a vague distaste for the kind of flat, colorless beauty that her face and figure represented. She resented her agile but unimaginative mind. She knew that she could see too far and understand too little. She was at the inconvenient level of intelligence where one is chiefly conscious that one is not clever enough.
Men found her sexually attractive, but casually and not deeply. Most men are not strong enough (or is it weak enough?) to love heroines despite the slight over-exaggerations permitted by poetic licence.
She slept with several men and to her surprise and utter horror found sex unexciting and unstimulating. It was at this time that she began to wonder whether she had anything to ask of the universe that the universe was capable of giving her.
She was intelligent but possessed no talents; she had insight but no judgment. It seemed that she was condemned to unhappiness, and that was why she wallowed in the self-pity that she ought to have outgrown. It did not satisfy her needs nor dispel her unhappiness, but it made it possible for her to live with her misery.
—6. Donna Teredo, traveling from star to star without any real reason. She visited stranger places than Craig Star Gazer, saw more and learned less. She saw more of ultra than she ought to have and found something there that was comforting. Perhaps there was something of the star wanderer in her. She gained a mission eventually during the six long years of travel, a mission that brought her wandering to a conclusion on the blackside of Chaos X. She found herself a purpose and came to Fury’s kingdom to fulfill that purpose.
She avoided asking herself, “Can I escape?” She knew the situation and could balance the probabilities. She affected to ignore the problem. But inside her, if she only knew it, was the faith of the heroine—the faith in the great cosmic script that would have her snatched magically from Fury’s vengeance alive and unblemished. There was a shadowy picture, which she would not admit to seeing, in her mind that showed her carried away from Chaos by a faceless hero fulfilling a cosmic destiny.
She was playing her role with determination and all the honesty that she could muster.
Now. After her scream had died, Craig asked her in a soothing whisper, “Why did you come to Chaos X?”
Her ear was very close to his lips, and they knew that nobody else could hear. Even so, the question was out of place. There had been a mutual understanding between the members of Watchgod’s cargo since the journey to Fury’s kingdom had begun that reasons were private. He had no right to ask any such question, and they both knew it. That question was one that should remain unasked, let alone unanswered.
She wondered how to reply to the question, if at all. She paused, then realized that Craig had not really asked at all. He was using the question as a prelude to telling her why he had come. He was not interested in her reasons.
“I came so that I wouldn’t have to be afraid of dying,” she said. It was a lie, and they both knew it. “I came to find someone,” said Craig. “A woman?” “Yes.”
“Did you love her?” The question was expected of her. She was obliged to ask because he wanted to answer. She didn’t care.
“Yes.”
“That’s not enough of a reason,” she said. She meant that.
He wanted to say then, “You don’t know what it’s like,” but he caught himself in time. He realized how ludicrous what he had been trying to say would sound if he ever got there. He was silent, wanting to back out. Into the pause Donna read his weakness.
“I thought that it was,” he said finally, weakly.
“What do you think now?” pressed Donna.
“I still think so.” The doubt in his voice did not reflect a doubt within himself. He did think so, but he was hesitant because he was trying to change the subject.
She changed it for him, switching the conversation away from his person while preserving the integrity of the words. “That kind of love is an illusion,” she said. “The only kind of love as strong as that is self-love.”
He was silent again. Donna watched him decide what to say next. She cut in on his train of thought by saying, “Ask yourself why you came to Chaos X.”
He didn’t, of course. He thought that he already knew the answer.
She took her own advice and asked herself the question, listening to it echo unanswered in her mind.
Then she felt beneath the pulse in her temple the phial that rested on Craig’s sternum. That was answer enough for the moment.
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CHAPTER FOUR
The Hero
John Wrath walked slowly up the path through the metal forest. He was relaxed but cautious. The globes of light that were eyes seemed to recede into the dimness. He wished for more light, not fully realizing that the darkness that stopped him seeing was as much in his mind as in the metal forest.
As he came nearer, he received impressions of moving shadows somewhere in front of him. They suggested that the thing blocking the track was preparing to meet him. They gave the impression that the thing was immense, but Wrath knew that half-light alters both shape and dimensions.
There were sounds, too, as the eyes moved slightly. They were dry sounds—half rustle and half click. They made him think of crabs and scorpions.
As he paused by a growth of iron that was like a spray of needles, he provided himself with a weapon. He took hold of a piece that was as long as he was tall and wrenched it free. It was doubtful whether he could have done it in space, but he hardly thought about it, and so it was easy. It was not very sharp and uncomfortably heavy, but it made a spear of sorts and so was better than the quarterstaff that he had left in the gondola.
Holding it near the twisted base, he carried it pointed forward and slightly tilted upward. The darkness seemed to close about him. There was a crack that made him jump, followed by Donna’s scream from behind him. Then time ceased. The forest had taken up a gentle sway to the new wind, but it was stopped absolutely dead now. The formless, frothing sky, hardly visible through the trees, was also frozen. The colors did not change; the flickering barrier of storms was absolutely still. Donna’s scream was gone, cut off so abruptly that he thought that he might have imagined it. He knew that something had happened but could not guess any reason. He still had power of movement within the stasis.
And so did the beast. It came forward now to me him. They were absolutely alone. The ultrauniverse was waiting for them.
Wrath watched its eyes grow wider and wider apart and prepared to run forward and plunge the spear between them. He could see nothing of shape, and the silence was absolute, but the way the thing moved strengthened the impressions he had already received of scorpion-ness.
“Kill it,” said a voice in his mind, which was the voice of his conditioning. He leaped into immediate action, gliding forward like a javelin thrower, slipping half sideways as he went into and all but under the eyes. At last he saw a shape, a head shape, vast and rounded with appendages disappearing into darkness on either side. The were stubby, hairy jaws, but he could see no mouth.
With all his strength he thrust the spear at the wide, flat forehead between the eyes. It hit a hard surface an jarred him badly. He almost slipped but retained both his footing and a tight hold on the spear. Quickly he snatched it back for a second swing and aimed instead for the eye itself, huge and deep blue, single lensed an shining invitingly.
The lens smashed, and with a faint tearing that was more feel than sound the spear went deep inside the exoskeleton. The thing jerked upward and backward, and Wrath relinquished his hold on the spear, dancing away to collect himself for a second all-out assault, barehanded.
Like a gigantic hand sweeping in from the side a pincer hit him around the waist, making him fold with the impact and thus concede it the time to take a firm grip. He was lifted from the ground with insulting ease an held squirming in midair. His hands ran quickly round the claw, exploring. Had he been trapped between the sharp points of each pincer head, they would have gone right through him. As it was, he was well within the curve of the clasp, caught in a vice rather than in the calipers but tightly held.
The pincer squeezed hard, and he gasped. With one hand to each he gripped the jaws and began to pull. While he pulled, he inspected for damage the eye into which his spear had gone. Still mutely glowing, it did not seem to be oozing humor. He was struck by the thought that the glowing eyes might be a directive decoy to draw off attack from more vulnerable parts. The spear seemed not to have hurt the monster in the least.
The pressure of the claw that held him was not unbearable, but because of its position around his waist he could not muster sufficient leverage to force them apart. He began to wriggle but found that he had no hope of extricating himself in that fashion, either, caught as he was between ribs and hips.
Suddenly he was smashed violently against the floor. His opponent had taken the offensive. It was apparently not used to disposing of its enemies in this way because it failed to put a great deal of power into the blow. He took the shock without damage and was ready for the second one. This, too, was clumsy, probably because of the mechanical restrictions of the exoskeletal joints. It was obvious that if the crude treatment continued, however, his legs would eventually break.
Rapidly his fingers sought and measured the joint of the pincer where the jaws were hinged. He raised his hand far above his head and brought it down, palm straight and rigid, with as much force as he could. The straight edge hit the hinge perfectly, and there was a satisfying crack—felt, not heard—less than a second before he hit the ground for the third time.
As he was carried up once again, he repeated the chop, and this time the hinge splintered. When he hit the ground again, it was just as though he had dropped from eight or nine feet, and he was able to part the grip around his waist and roll away.
As quickly as possible, he was on his feet again in a fighter’s crouch and already moving toward the spear dangling uselessly from the glowing eye. The other claw brushed past him, missing its clutch.
He leaped at the spear, reaching out with the hope of finding a handhold in the eye socket. He found a ridge on the edge of the eye and hung by both hands, drawing his legs up rapidly to avoid contact with the hairy palps around the mandibles. He grabbed with one hand for the spear and wrenched, but it would not come loose. Instead of heaving at it, he used it as a handhold to draw his feet up to the ridge at the base of the eye and then scrambled up on top of the head to avoid the viciously scything pincer reaching around for him. The Pincer seemed to be limited in its movement out of the horizontal plane, and the top of the head seemed to be a less vulnerable spot than the side of the face.
Then, reaching down and gripping the spear from above, he exerted all his strength.
The free end moved in a long arc as though he were pulling a lever with the top of the eye socket as a fulcrum. He could feel it crushing and ripping flesh within the monster’s body, but still it gave no sign of being hurt.
He got the spear free, finally, after some twisting and drew it up in order to plunge it vertically through the top of the gargantuan head. Like a whiplash something carved through the air and knocked him flying. The spear jammed itself back into the eye socket, and his hold on the metal somehow kept him on top of the animal. The blow had come from behind, and he instantly thought of the tail of a scorpion.
Dimly, he could see the thing coiling forward in another thrust. He scrambled back, pulling the spear free and using it as though it were a quarterstaff to take the force of the blow.
The iron snapped.
He doubled the pieces instantly, holding them together in his fists like a two-handed sword, preparing to meet the next blow with a counterstroke instead of defense.
The thrust was a low, straight one, as though the beast were trying to knock his feet from under him. He sidestepped and hit the whiplike tail with a powerful sweep of his two-piece club. The tail broke as it recoiled, and the sharp-pointed tip went limp. Nevertheless, it drove in again with amazing rapidity, and he was forced to parry without any attempt at aggressive retaliation. Again the monster tried a slash from above, and this time Wrath was sufficiently quick to get in a fairly powerful reprisal. The blow was too near the base of the club, but the exoskeleton broke again, and this time when the tail recoiled into darkness, it did not return.
Wrath ran back along the head of the beast until he reached a joint in the exoskeleton where the carapace of the head met the first thoracic element. With the sharp end of the half-spear he hacked away membrane and connective tissue until there was a gap in the joint into which he could get his hands. He thrust the wider half of the spear into the joint to keep the plates of chitin apart.
Then, feet well spaced on the thoracic plate, he gripped the carapace in both hands and heaved upward. His arms ached, then burned with pain, and he began to sweat profusely. A section of the rim broke away from the carapace.
He paused for a moment, swaying as the beast began to circle and buck. Then he took a grip on the thicker chitin and resumed his effort. A second before the strain would have forced him to stop, the carapace came free. A plate of chitin shaped like a shield, twenty feet long and more wide, came up from the monster’s neck like a trap door opening. Free of the leverage, John Wrath was tumbled over by the violent movement of the beast. He fell over into the soft flesh he had exposed, and the trap door settled again, threatening to seal him in.
His feet sank deep and were flooded with warm, viscous liquid. He fell on one knee but recovered and began, with difficulty, to walk relentlessly forward.
As he moved, he swung the carapace farther and farther forward, and its weight forced him deeper and deeper into the flesh. Finally he toppled the plate over completely, and it snapped away from the edge at which it was still secured.
By now the animal was practically crazy with pain. It scuttled from side to side, colliding with metal trees and sending Wrath sprawling in the wet, warm flesh.
With great delight he began to thrash and tear. Regaining his feet, he began a mad, gay dance, stamping his feet deeper and deeper. By the edge of the gaping pool of semiliquid he found one part of the metal spear and began swinging it violently in and out of the sticky mess into which he sank. He began to laugh, and the sound of his laughter shattered the time stasis, and the universe began to move again.
A metal tree that the beast had broken during its frantic flailing while time stood still finally began to fall, very slowly at first but gathering momentum. Wrath, knee deep in fat and connective tissue in a bath of lymph and ichor, watched it fall with eager fascination and only just remembered to get out of the way.
The monster’s uncountable legs broke simultaneously under the impact, and it was pinned hard to the floor, chitin pulverized and viscera squashed. The falling tree shattered into a hundred fragments—it was very heavy but very brittle, which was why it had broken in the first place.
Splinters showered and stung Wrath, but his arms kept them out of his eyes, and they did little enough damage although he bled from several more cuts.
Slowly, aching in every limb, he clambered away from the corpse of the animal and walked back down the path to the waiting gondola.
He looked back at the monster and realized that he could see it now in great detail. It wasn’t dark anymore.
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Julius Watchgod
Once upon a time, a long time before this story started, Julius Watchgod was a believer. He believed in his goddess, his destiny, his luck, and in himself.
He had quiet eyes and a quiet disposition. He lacked vivacity and forcefulness but not intelligence or ability. But he was an almost characterless person, and he was forced to strengthen his character in the only way available to him—by belief.
He believed in Coma, a deity named by the ironic wit of pure coincidence, and also in another god (the God), who was a different sort of deity altogether. Coma was his, a friendly, ever-present deity with the time necessary to devote to him who kept him from being lonely and getting lost in the great big wonderful universe. On the other hand, he did admit that his half-pint goddess wasn’t the only type of deity hanging about in the universe, and he was also prepared to believe in the God (the creator, the prime mover, the cause uncaused, and so on). In fact, Julius Watchgod was prepared to believe in practically anything.
