The harpies were almost on top of them and now shifted the direction of their dive, pivoting in midair so that they presented their massively taloned feet rather than their beaked heads.
Cornwall swung his sword and the singing blade sliced off the feet of a plunging harpy. The heavy body, falling to the ground, bounced and rolled. The vicious beak of the wounded monster stabbed at Hal’s leg as it rolled past, but missed the stroke.
Standing close to the Gossiper, Bucket was the center of a network of lashing tentacles, knocking the diving harpies off their mark, catching them and hurling them against the stony walls.
Jones, swinging his club with lusty will, knocked down two of the attackers. The third got through, fastening one claw on his arm, trying to reach his face with the other. The mighty wings beat heavily to lift him. Hal, hearing Jones’ startled yell, swung about and sent an arrow into the body of the monster. Both the harpy and Jones fell heavily; Jones jerked free, and with his club beat in the harpy’s skull. His left arm, streaming blood, hung limply.
The Gossiper beat off an attack with his staff, the raven screaming in triumph. Oliver and Sniveley sturdily kept on pegging rocks.
Gib cut down two of the attackers with his ax while Cornwall, swinging a deadly, gleaming blade, fought off harpy after harpy. A half a dozen wounded harpies hopped and fluttered about the rocky floor of the gorge. The air was filled with floating feathers.
One of the harpies, missing its plunge at Sniveley, perhaps diverted by the barrage of rocks that Oliver and Sniveley kept up, apparently quite by accident hooked one of its claws in Sniveley’s belt and started to beat skyward. Sniveley squalled in terror, and Hal, seeing what had happened, winged an arrow that drove through the creature’s neck. It fell heavily, dragging Sniveley with it.
The harpies drew off, laboring mightily to drive their massive bodies skyward.
Cornwall lowered his sword and looked about. Mary crouched at his feet. Sniveley, snarling oaths, was pulling himself free of the dead harpy’s grasping talon. Hal lowered his bow and watched the retreating harpies.
“They’ll be back,” he said, “taking only enough time to regroup. And I have but three arrows left. I could retrieve some from the bodies of the harpies, but that will take some time.”
Sniveley, still spitting fury, came limping up the gorge. He raged at Hal, “That arrow you loosed almost hit me. I could feel the wind of it going past my ear.”
“Would you rather I had let it haul you off?” asked Hal.
“You should be more careful,” Sniveley yelled.
Cornwall asked Jones, “How badly are you hurt?”
“My arm is deeply cut. It will stiffen, and I fear there will be infection.” He said to Hal, “I thank you for your shot.”
“We’ll be hard pressed,” said Cornwall, “to fight them off next time. We were lucky this time. I think that our resistance considerably surprised them.”
Now heavy shadows lay within the gorge. The sun no longer lighted anything but a thin segment of the soaring walls of rock. Black pools of darkness lay here and there in the sharp angles of the floor.
“There is a way,” said the Gossiper, “by which we may be able to evoke some help. I am not too certain, but I think it might work.”
Bucket stood stolidly where he had been standing all the time, his tentacles now retracted except for the one, folded in its boxlike conformation, resting on his chest.
The Gossiper reached out his staff and touched the folded tentacle with the tip of it, holding out his other hand.
“Please,” he said. “Please give it to me. It may be the one thing that will save us.”
Bucket stirred, began deliberately to unwind the tentacle as they watched. Finally, they could see what he had been holding—the fist ax of the Old Ones.
“He cleaned the floor of the shelter of all the stones and clubs,” said Gib. “That was when he got it.”
Bucket held out the ax to the Gossiper.
“Thank you,” said the Gossiper, taking it.
He fit it in his hand and raised it high into the air, beginning a wild, melodious chant. The narrow walls caught the singsong phrases and flung them back and forth so that the little area between them seemed to be filled with many-voiced chanting, as if a choir were chanting. As the chant went on, the shadows deepened even further, and in the shadows there was a stirring and a sound—the sound of many padding feet.
Mary screamed, and Cornwall jerked up his sword, then lowered it slowly. “God save us now,” he said.
There seemed to be hundreds of them, little more than shadows in the shadows, but delineated enough even in the gloom so they could be seen for what they were—great brutish gnarly men, naked for large part, although some of them wore pelts about their middles. They slouched on knees that did not want to straighten out, and they walked bent forward from the waist. They carried shafts with crude stone points attached, and their eyes gleamed redly in the gloom.
High in the brightness of the sky, the ranks of harpies ceased to spiral upward and began their dive. They hurtled down in a mass attack and Cornwall, watching, knew that this time there was no chance to stop them. He reached out his free arm and drew Mary close against him.
Savage yells drowned out the chanting of the Gossiper. The gnarly men were screaming in a frenzy and shaking their spears at the diving harpies. The shadowy men moved in closer, crowding in. The gorge seemed filled with them.
The harpies plunged down between the looming walls. Then, suddenly, the charge was broken. In midair they windmilled their wings to check their plunge, bumping into one another, a flurry of beating wings and flying feathers. They squalled in surprise and outrage, and beneath them the gnarly men howled in exultant triumph.
The Gossiper ceased his chanting and cried out in a loud voice. “Now, run! Run for your lives!”
Cornwall pushed Mary behind him. “Follow me,” he said. “Stay close. I’ll open up a path.”
He lowered his head and charged, expecting resistance from the press of bodies all about him. But there was no resistance. He plowed through the gnarly men as if they had been a storm of autumn-blown leaves. Ahead of him Jones stumbled and fell, screaming as his mangled arm came in contact with the stone beneath him. Cornwall stooped and caught him, lifting him, slinging him across his shoulder. Ahead of him all the others, including Mary, were racing through the drifts of shadowy gnarly men. Glancing upward, he saw that the harpies were breaking free from the constrictions of the rock walls of the gorge, bursting out into sunlit sky.
Just ahead was light where the gorge ended on what appeared to be a level plain. The gnarly men were gone. He passed the Gossiper who was stumping along as rapidly as he could, grunting with his effort. Ahead of the Gossiper, the little white dog skipped along with a weaving, three-legged gait, Coon loping at his side.
Then they were out of the gorge, running more easily now. Ahead of them, a few miles out on the little plain, which was ringed in by towering mountains, loomed a fairy building—as Jones had said, all froth and lace, but even in its insubstantiality, with a breathtaking grandeur in it.
“You can let me down now,” said Jones. “Thank you for the lift.”
Cornwall slowed to a halt and lowered him to his feet.
Jones jerked his head at the injured arm. “The whole damn thing’s on fire,” he said, “and it’s pounding like a bell.”
He fell into step with Cornwall. “My vehicle’s just up ahead,” he said. “You can see it there, off to the right. I have a hypodermic—Oh, hell, don’t ask me to explain. It’s a magic needle. You may have to help me with it. I’ll show you how.”
Coming across the meadow that lay between them and the fairy building was a group of beings, too distant to be seen with any distinctness except that it could be seen that one of them stood taller than the others.
“Well, I be damned,” said Jones. “When I was here before, I wandered all about and there was no one here to greet me, and now look at
the multitude that is coming out to meet us.”
Ahead of all the others ran a tiny figure that yipped and squealed with joy, turning cartwheels to express its exuberance.
“Mary!” it yipped. “Mary! Mary! Mary!”
“Why,” Mary said, astounded, “I do believe it is Fiddle-fingers. I have wondered all along where the little rascal went to.”
“You mean the one who made mud pies with you?” asked Cornwall.
“The very one,” said Mary.
She knelt and cried out to him, and he came in with a rush to throw himself into her arms. “They told me you were coming,” he shrieked, “but I could not believe them.”
He wriggled free and backed off a way to have a look at her. “You’ve gone and grown up,” he said accusingly. “I never grew at all.”
“I asked at the Witch House,” said Mary, “and they told me you had disappeared.”
“I have been here for years and years,” the little brownie said. “I have so many things to show you.”
By now the rest of those who were coming in to meet them had drawn close enough for them to see that most of them were little people, a dancing, hopping gaggle of brownies, trolls, elves, and fairies. Walking in their midst was a somber manlike figure clothed in a long black gown, with a black cowl pulled about his head and face. Except that it seemed he really had no face—either that or the shadow of the cowl concealed his face from view. And there was about him a sort of mistiness, as if he walked through a fogginess that now revealed and now concealed his shape.
When he was close to them, he stopped and said in a voice that was as somber as his dress, “I am the Caretaker, and I bid you welcome here. I suspect you had some trouble with the harpies. At times they become somewhat overzealous.”
“Not in the least,” said Hal. “We gently brushed them off.”
“We have disregarded them,” said the Caretaker, “because we have few visitors. I believe, my dear,” he said, speaking to Mary, “that your parents were here several years ago. Since then, there have been no others.”
“I was here a few days ago,” said Jones, “and you paid no attention to me. I think you made a deliberate effort to make it seem that this place was deserted.”
“We looked you over, sir,” said the Caretaker. “Before we made ourselves known to you, we wanted to find out what kind of thing you were. But you left rather hurriedly.…”
Mary interrupted him. “You say that they were here,” she said, “my parents. Are they here no longer, then?”
“They went to another place,” said the Caretaker. “I will tell you of that and much more a little later on. All of you will join us at table, will you not?”
“Now that you speak of it,” said the Gossiper, “I believe that I could do with a small bit of nourishment.”
38
The Caretaker sat at the head of the table, and now it was apparent that he, indeed, did not have a face. Where the face should have been, underneath the cowl, was what seemed an area of fogginess, although now and then, Cornwall thought, watching him, there was at times faint, paired red sparks that might take the place of eyes.
He did not eat but sat there while they did, speaking to them pleasantly enough but of inconsequential things, asking them about their journey, talking about how the crops had been, discussing the vagaries of the weather—simply making conversation.
And there was about him, Cornwall thought, not only a fogginess about his face but about his entire being, as if he might be some sort of wraith so insubstantial that one would not have been amazed if he had disappeared altogether, blown by the wind.
“I do not know what to make of him,” Sniveley said to Cornwall, speaking in a confidential whisper. “He fits in with nothing I’ve ever heard of as dwelling in the Wasteland. A ghost one might think at first, but he is not a ghost, of that I am quite certain. There is a certain misty character to him that I do not like.”
The food was in no way fancy, but it was good and solid fare, and there was plenty of it. The Caretaker kept urging them to eat. “There is plenty of it,” he kept saying. “There is enough for all.”
But finally it became apparent that everyone had eaten all they could, and the Caretaker said, “Now that we are finished, there is much explanation that is due and there may be some questions you want to ask.”
Sniveley piped up hurriedly. “We have been wondering …” But the Caretaker waved him down.
“You’re the one who has been wondering what I am,” he said, “and I think it is only fair I tell you, which I would have in any case, but in its proper time. I told you I am the Caretaker and, in a sense, I am. But basically I’m what you might call a philosopher, although that is not the word exactly. There is no word in your world that can precisely describe what I am. ‘Philosophical engineer,’ probably would come as close as any, and you, Mr. Jones, and you, Sir Mark, if you wish to make dispute of this, please to wait a while.…”
“We’ll hold our questions,” Cornwall said, “but there is one thing that I demand to know. You are acquainted with our names, but we have never told you them.”
“You will not like me when I tell you,” the Caretaker said, “but the honest answer is I can see into your minds. Very deeply, should I wish, but to go deeply would be impolite, so I merely brush the surface. Only the surface information: who you are and where you’ve been. Although should I go deeply and unearth your inmost secrets, you need feel no embarrassment. For I am not of this planet and my values are not entirely your values, and even should they coincide, I would not presume to judge you, for I know from many eons the great diversities of minds—”
“Before the rest of you get in with your questions,” Mary said, hurrying before anyone else could speak, “I want to know what happened to my folks.”
“They went back home,” the Caretaker said.
“You mean they went without me. They never even thought of coming back to get me.”
“You will hate me for this,” said the Caretaker, “as you very rightly should. But I persuaded them, and supplied convincing evidence, that you had died.”
“What a hateful thing to do,” said Mary scornfully. “What a nasty thing. I hope you had a reason.…”
“My dear, I had a reason. And I consoled myself that it would work out in the end.…”
“So you’re clairvoyant, too,” said Jones. “With all your other creepy qualities.”
“Well, not exactly,” said the Caretaker, a little flustered. “I have, rather, a certain sense of destiny. In the sort of work I do it is necessary, and—”
“Forget about the destiny,” said Mary coldly, “And tell us what was so important—”
“If you’d quit shouting at me and give me a chance.”
“I wasn’t shouting,” Mary said.
“We’ll give you your chance,” said Cornwall, “and I warn you, sir, your reason had better be a good one.”
“Perhaps,” said the Caretaker, “I had best begin at the beginning, which is what I should have done to start with. My race is an ancient one, and it rose on the planet situated well within the galactic core. Long before there was such a thing as a human being, perhaps before the first life crawled out of the sea, we had built a great civilization. And I know, Sir Mark, that you are confounded and perhaps a bit incensed …”
“He’ll be all right,” said Jones. “He can ask his questions later; he is achieving an open mind in seeing that there is more than magic. So please get on with it.”
“All right, then, I will,” the Caretaker said. “We could have advanced to a very lofty culture that would have set us aside from the galaxy, perhaps from the universe. For we were among the first intelligence and had a head start on all the others. We could have fashioned for ourselves a way of life that by now would have been beyond anything even we ourselves can imagine, but there were certain wise men among us in very ancient times who saw the loneliness of such a course, if it should be taken. They knew that if we continued
as we were going, we would stand alone, cutting ourselves off from all other life. Facing a decision, we made it, and the decision was that we would not live for ourselves alone but for the other intelligences that might evolve throughout the galaxy.”
“Mister,” Jones said harshly, “I know your kind. In my world, we are up to our armpits in them. Do-gooders who make it their business to interfere with other people, who would be much happier without the interference.”
“You mistake me,” said the Caretaker. “We are observers only. We try not to interfere. It is only at a crisis point—”
“And you think this is a crisis point?”
“I have a feeling that it might be. Not that any great catastrophe is about to happen, but through the fear that something that could happen may fail to happen. Here, on this little plot of ground, there exists a chance for greatness. If the greatness does not come about, a unique culture will be lost to the galaxy, perhaps to the universe. And if it will make you feel any better, Mr. Jones, it is not you people here with whom I am concerned, but with the citizens of the galaxy.
“I would have you believe that we are not missionaries. We are not welfare workers. We are only observers. We merely watch and hope. We reveal ourselves and take a hand in things only when there seems no alternative.”
“This is all well and good,” said Cornwall, “and it sounds very pretty in the telling, but it still leaves me confused. And the greatest confusion of all is by what means you see greatness in this place. A repository, of course, for Wasteland lore, and that certainly is worth the saving.…”
“Not the Wasteland lore, alone, my friend, but the lore, the hopes, the potentialities of three great civilizations, all springing from a common source, three divergent philosophies, which, if they could be fused together …”
“Three,” said Jones. “I think I see what you are getting at, but there are only two, not three. The culture of the Wasteland and of Cornwall’s world and the culture of my world. Magic and technology, and I agree they might work in tandem.”