“It’s not just the Dhulhulikh! The other Tree peoples are in on this raid! They’re not a horde, if our information is correct, but they are a large body, and they’ve formed a spearhead which has swept through most of our defenses in this area! They’re being held up now, but they won’t be kept back long! The Grand Vizier says they’re probably intent on getting you! They can’t hope to take the city! But they could get you!”
Something nudged the darkness aside and revealed itself as another armored car. Like the first, it looked like a wheeled tortoise. The curved roof was made of three layers of thick densely grained wood over a thick layer of plastic. The sides were double-walled and contained doors and slit-holes. It held a driver, an officer, and six archers. Though there had been no thought of its withstanding explosives when it was built some years before, it had proved capable of shrugging off the small bombs of the bat-men.
Ulysses crouched near the door while the crossbowmen stood outside to cover him. Then he gestured at Awina to run out to him. She did so, almost ending up as a recipient of a poisoned arrow. This missed her by several inches, and then she was by his side. A bowman was lucky enough to hit the bat-man who had flown in to shoot at Awina. His bolt caught the bat-man in his arm, pinning it to his side. The bat-man screamed and dropped his bow and then fluttered down. Another bolt struck deep into his ribs just as his feet touched the ground.
“Get in!” Ulysses said to Awina. He spoke to Bleezhmag. “I will go if you will see that the rest of my people are transported, too.”
“Very well,” Bleezhmag said.
Ulysses gestured at his men under the tree, and those still on their feet helped the wounded to get across the open area to the cars. Either the bat-men had exhausted their supply of missiles or they were too respectful of the bowmen. They did not try to attack the group while it was unprotected.
The cavalcade moved out onto the road at twenty miles an hour. The headlights were not bright compared to those on the cars of Ulysses’ time; they illuminated the road perhaps twenty feet ahead of them. Ulysses asked Bleezhmag why the lights were on. They would only attract the invaders, and they were not really needed, since the drivers knew this road well.
“I have no orders to turn them off,” the Neshgai said. He was slumped down in his seat and breathing heavily through his mouth. The blood was still running from his wounds.
Ulysses was standing on the seat beside him, which had held another Neshgai officer, presumably left behind because he was dead or incapacitated. On Ulysses’ right was a Neshgai driver. Behind him, in the space in the center, Awina and seven Wufea were crowded together. The archers peered out through the slits into the darkness half-lit by the beams of the vehicles behind them.
“You have no orders?” Ulysses said. “Are you forbidden to turn them off unless you get orders to do so?”
Bleezhmag nodded. Ulysses said, “I am ordering you to turn off the lights. It may be too late now, but do so anyway.”
“I am an armored car corpsman, and you are an officer of the air force,” the Neshgai said. “You have no authority over me.”
“But I have been entrusted to you!” Ulysses said. “You are charged with delivering me to the capital. My life is in your hands! By not turning off the lights, you are endangering me! Not to mention my personnel, for whose lives I am responsible!”
“No orders,” Bleezhmag said drowsily, and he died.
Ulysses spoke into the transceiver box. “Commander Singing Bear, speaking for Colonel Bleezhmag, who has delegated his authority to me because of his wounds. Turn off the lights!”
A moment later, the cavalcade rolled over the highway in the darkness. The road was whitish enough for them to follow it at a fifteen-mph speed, and Ulysses had hopes that they might get to the capital unattacked.
He pressed the button marked HQ in the Neshgai symbol on the side of the box. This would cause pressure on a nerve spot in the vegetable organism, and the frequency band would be shifted.
He got no reply to his repeated demands to be put through to the Grand Vizier or the general of the army. Even when he identified himself, he failed to get a response. He switched back to the frequency used among the cars and told the operator in the car behind him to send requests to HQ. Then he turned in on all the frequencies available to the transceiver, hoping to find out how the defense was coming. He heard a number of conversations, but he was left as confused as those he listened in on. Then he tried to cut in on some of these with the hope that he could get his request relayed to HQ, but he failed.
The Neshgai driver, peering through the slit, said, “Commander! I see something on the field just ahead!”
Ulysses told him to hold his speed and he looked through the slit. He saw a number of pale figures advancing swiftly across the fields, evidently intending to cut the train off. He switched on the lights, and the figures became somewhat clearer. Eyes gleamed redly in the reflection, and the paleness became leopard-spotted bipeds with tails. They held spears and round objects, which must be bombs. How had The Tree people gotten gunpowder?
He spoke into the transceiver. “Enemy on the right! About thirty yards, I’d say! Full speed ahead! Run over them if they get in the way. Archers, fire at will!”
The first of the running leopard-men got to the road. A red glow suddenly appeared, and then a sputter of fire. He had opened a firebox and applied it to the fuse of a bomb. The fire described an arc as the bomb flew toward the lead car. A crossbow twanged, and a bolt shot out of the front right slit. The enemy screamed and fell. There was a thump against the roof, and then an explosion that rocked the car and half-deafened them. But the bomb had bounced off the roof and onto the road by the side of the car. The car kept on going.
Other figures rushed up, some with spears and a few with open fireboxes and bombs. The spearmen tried to thrust their weapons through the slits, and the bombardiers tossed their weapons at the side of the car.
The spearmen fell, pierced by bolts. Bombs struck and bounced off the sides and the roof and blew up on the road, doing more harm to the enemy than to the carmen. Then the lead car was past them, and the survivors were attacking the other cars. More than half of the enemy was left dead or wounded. One leopard-man, running desperately, leaped upon the sloping roof of the last car. He placed a bomb on the roof, leaped off, and was shot in the back. The bomb blew the two top layers off and cracked the third. The occupants could not hear for some time, but they were unharmed.
When the cavalcade rolled into the city, they found a few buildings burning and some minor damage. The batmen had dropped bombs and shot down soldiers and civilians in the streets. A suicide team had flown through the windows of the fourth story of the palace (which had not been barred, though orders had been given two weeks before to do so). They had killed many people with their poisoned arrows but had failed to kill the ruler and the Grand Vizier. And all except two of the team had died.
Ulysses learned this from Shegnif. He said, “Do not kill your two prisoners, Most Excellent. We can torture the secret of the location of their base city out of them.”
“Then what?” Shegnif said.
“Then we use a new air fleet, much better than the first, to attack and destroy the base city of the Dhulhulikh. And we attack The Tree itself.”
Shegnif was surprised. He said, “You are not at all downcast by what happened tonight?”
“Not at all,” Ulysses said. “The enemy really accomplished very little, and they may have done us a service. If the blimps had not been destroyed, I might have had a hard time getting you to authorize the building of better craft. I have in mind much larger craft. My native tongue called them dirigibles. Directibles, or steerables, would be a good translation. These will require much more material, planning and time, but they will be more than adequate for the mission I plan.”
He had thought the Vizier would be angry because of his assumptions, but Shegnif was pleased. He said, “This invasion—which is still going on, by the way, but is being contai
ned—convinces me of one thing. You are right in that the enemy must be hit in the heart. We could fritter away our resources and personnel by just defending our borders. Though I do not see how we can harm The Tree, even if we kill its Eyes, the Dhulhulikh. Perhaps you have a solution?”
Ulysses outlined his plans. Shegnif listened, nodding his great head, feeling his tusks, tapping his forehead with the tendriled ends of his trunk. Then he said, “I’ll authorize your plans at once. The Vignoom and the Glassim are being pushed back, and we’re rushing more troops up. And we’ve taken about twenty more wounded bat-men.”
“Some can give us information,” Ulysses said. “And others can be used in the training of the hawks.”
Again, he was very busy from dawn until long past dusk. He did have time to investigate the quarrel between Thebi and Awina. He had not seen the woman after leaving the office to go into the hangar, but she showed up a few days later. Her story was that she had staggered out into the open immediately after Ulysses left, and she had collapsed between the hangars. She awoke on the field by a group of corpses. Her wound had bled a lot but was not deep.
Both females admitted that they had been quarreling about which was the highest in his affections and about whom should be his permanent aid. Thebi had attacked Awina with her nails, and Awina had pulled her knife.
Ulysses decided not to inflict any imprisonment or physical punishment on either. He defined their duties and positions and how they should behave in the future. They must conform to these. Otherwise, both would be sent away for a long time.
Thebi wept, and Awina wailed, but they promised to behave.
One of the first things he did was to call in a large number of hawk trainers. These were free men whose only job was to raise and educate the several types of accipitrine birds for their masters, who liked to go ahawking. Instead of training these fierce birds to go after ducks, pigeons and other feathered prey, they would teach them to attack the bat-men. There were enough Dhulhulikh prisoners who would be expendable after they had recovered from their wounds.
Five months later, Ulysses attended the first showing of the results of the new training. The young ruler, the Grand Vizier and the military brass were there. A sullen-faced bat-man who knew what was coming, was released. He ran down the sloping field, his wings flapping, and took off slowly. He had attained about forty feet, flying against the wind, when he wheeled around and came back over the field. He carried a short spear with a stone tip, and he had been promised that if he could successfully defend himself against two hawks, he would be allowed to fly home.
He probably did not believe the promise. It would be stupid of the Neshgai to permit him to carry the news of this new weapon to his people. If he did kill the two hawks, others would be loosed at him. He had no chance of outrunning them.
But he did as he was told and came back over the field at the specified height so that the attack could be witnessed. As he swept back down, the hoods of the two hawks were pulled off, and their trainers threw them into the air. They circled for a moment and then, crying hoarsely, climbed above the bat-man. He winged away desperately. The two hawks came down like feathered lightning bolts and struck with a noise that the observers could hear. Just before they did, the bat-man had folded his wings and whirled to face them. One struck his head, and this one died from the knife, but would not loosen the talons. The other hit a few seconds later, digging its talons into the belly of the bat-man. Shrieking, the winged man fell and hit the ground with enough force to break his legbones and one wingbone. The surviving hawk continued to tear at his belly.
“We can’t carry a trainer for each bird, of course,” Ulysses said. “We are training them now so that they will be in individual cages, the doors of which will be opened by a single mechanism. They will be unhooded, and they will fly out and attack the nearest bat-man. And they will keep on attacking.”
“Let’s hope so,” Shegnif said. “I don’t put much faith in the efficiency of hawks. There is nothing to keep a number from attacking one bat-man while the other bat-men go by unhindered.”
“My trainers are working on that,” Ulysses said.
Despite his objections, the Grand Vizier seemed pleased.
He made his bows and trunk-touchings to the ruler, who was carried back to the palace in an elaborately carved vehicle. Shegnif walked beside Ulysses for a while, talking, and, once, affectionately touching Ulysses on the nose with the tip of his trunk.
“We are indeed fortunate that the stone god was awakened by a lightning bolt,” he said. “Though no doubt it was Nesh who sent the lightning.”
He smiled, Ulysses had not yet determined whether or not the Vizier’s frequent references to his god were the result of piety or irony.
“Nesh de-stoned you so you could be of service to his people. That is what the priests tell me, and I, even though the Grand Vizier to His Majesty, bow when the lowliest priest informs me of the merest truth.
“And so, I have been delegated to tell you that you are indeed the fortunate one. You are the only alien, the only non-Neshgai, who has ever been invited to read the Book of Tiznak. In fact, very few Neshgai are so honored.”
He found out what Shegnif meant early next morning. A priest, clad in hood and robes as gray as his skin, and holding a wand with an X in a broken circle carved at its end, came for him. His name was Zhishbroom. He was young, affable and very polite. But he made it clear that the high priest was summoning, not requesting, Ulysses’ presence at the temple.
Ulysses drove out to the western edge of the city and was conducted into a square-walled triple-domed building of stone. Its smallness surprised him. It was a sixty-foot cube and held nothing but a granite statue of Nesh in its center. Nesh looked like a male Neshgai, although his tusks were somewhat longer than average and his snout thicker.
Three priests stood like sentries, each forming the apex of a triangle in the middle of which was the statue. Zhishbroom led the man past the first priest and stopped. He stooped and pressed on a tiny block of stone, and a block of the granite floor sank before him. He led Ulysses down a steep flight of granite steps lit by the cold light of vegetables. The granite slab moved out and then up behind them, and they were entombed—in a manner of speaking.
He had not suspected that there was another city under the one above ground.
This was about four square miles in area and in four levels. It had not been built by the Neshgai. It did not take long to determine that even without being told so by the priests. Ulysses realized that he was inside some sort of very ancient museum.
“Who built this city?” he said.
“We do not know,” the priest replied. “There is evidence that it was once inhabited by a people descended from dogs or some sort of canines. But we do not think that they built this. They found it, and they lived in it without disturbing the objects you see here. And then they disappeared. They may have been killed or have left for some reason. There are people who live with The Tree who resemble these ancient peoples. They may be their descendants.
“In any event, we Neshgai were a small and primitive tribe when we wandered here, some say as refugees from The Tree. We found much here that we could use. The vegetable circuits, batteries and motors, for instance, were grown from seeds found preserved in containers. There were also many objects the purpose of which we have never been able to determine. If we could we might be able to blast The Tree to destroy it. Perhaps this is why The Tree is so intent on destroying us. It wishes to kill us before we find out how to kill it.”
He paused and then said, “And then there is the Book of Tiznak.”
Ulysses said, “Tiznak?”
“He was the greatest of our priests, an ancient who found out how to read the Book. Follow me. I will take you to the Book, as directed. And to Kuushmurzh, the high priest.”
Kuushmurzh was a very old and very wrinkled Neshgai with thick spectacles and shaky hands. He blessed Ulysses without getting up off his huge many-cushio
ned chair and said he would see him after he had read the Book. That is, he would if Ulysses was able to read the Book.
Ulysses followed the young priest past display after display, all protected by transparent walls of some material. And then he came to a cubicle which was empty except for a plate of some metal fixed to the base of a metal platform. He stopped before it, and said, “That is strange. What was once there?”
“I think you were,” Zhishbroom said. “At least, that is the legend. The platform was empty when we Neshgai found this place.”
Ulysses’ heart beat faster, and he felt his skin turning into a mushy and cold liquid. He bent down to stare at the black lettering on the yellow metal. The room was so silent he could hear the blood singing in his ears. The sourceless light was as heavy as the cover on the Tomb of the Ages.
The letters looked as if they might have evolved from the Latin alphabet. Or from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which was based on a number of alphabets. He studied the letters while the priest stood as patiently as one of his elephant forebears behind him. If he took for granted the similarity of the letters to those of the IPA, then he might be able to figure it out. There were thirty lines, and surely he could decipher some words here and there, no matter how much the language might have changed.
Of course, he told himself, the language might not be a form of English. He had no right to believe that he was still on a portion of the North American continent. He could have been moved to Eurasia or Africa, and this could be descended from any one of a thousand languages of his time.
Still, the Arabic numbers should not have changed. And there was nothing like them except for some ones, which could be ells. Maybe the numbers were, for some reason, spelled out.
Cuziz Zine Nea. These were the only capitalized letters. Could they stand for Ulysses Singing Bear? The initial y phoneme in Ulysses had become affricated for some reason, perhaps because of a word-final affricate preceding it? Maybe, in some cases, the word-final sound immediately preceding the word-initial sound of the next word influenced it if it were in a certain class. Just as Zine may have been Singing at one time, and the s became voiced when preceded by a voiced sound. The ing had become en, and then the n became a nasalization of the e, but during the evolution of the language it had influenced all words which, following it, began with a bilabial or labiodental phoneme. So that, though the final n of Zine had disappeared, Bear (once Ber, then Be) was Ne when it followed any word that had once had a final m or n.