The Pritcher Mass

  He looked around. The blocking-out Eileen was doing to him still held. He could not locate her by any paranormal means. He looked at the ground; but it held no message for him: He had been born and raised in the sterile areas; and even if he had not he doubted he would have been the sort of wilderness expert who could follow a trail left by someone in open country. That left only the ordinary uses of his mind, as the means to find her.

  Eileen, also, would have been born and raised in the sterile areas. Surely she would have been in search of some kind of shelter. Equally as surely, she would have wanted to take advantage of as much protection from the wind as possible while she searched. To the lower side of the downslope at his left and stretching away over further rolling hills to the horizon, the visible ground was clear except for an occa­sional tree or clump of bushes. To his right, along the crown of the hill, and thickening as it ran ahead, was a belt of fairly good-sized pine and spruce trees. The wind should be less among them. Chaz headed toward the trees in the direction he remem­bered Eileen had been headed when he had last viewed her.

  In spite of the airsuit, in the open he chilled rapidly. However, once he reached the trees the wind was in­deed less, and also by that time he had begun to warm himself up with the exercise of walking. He moved just inside the edge of the trees, keeping his eyes open for any sign of more solid shelter.

  A mile or so along, he came upon the remnants of a barbed-wire fence running through the edge of the wood. In this country, where family farms had been the rule, a fence usu­ally meant a farmhouse not too far away. A farmhouse could mean shel­ter of some sort, unless it had been burned down.

  Eileen would almost certainly have followed such a fence. But which way? Chaz mulled it over, guessed that she would have been most likely to go the way that was closest to the direction in which she had already been traveling, and went that way himself. The fence contin­ued through the trees, emerged in a small, open swampy area, where it circled a pond and climbed a small hill. On the other side of the hill there was no house, but something almost as good—a somewhat over­grown but still recognizable asphalt road, which to the right led out of sight over yet another hill, but to the left led to something that seemed al­most certain to be a clump of build­ings, or even a small town. Chaz took the road to the left.

  As he got close to what he had seen up the road to the left, the hope of a small town evaporated. What he finally made out was what looked to have been a roadside filling station, store and garage, with a house and barn sitting closely behind the sta­tion. As he got nearer to the clump of buildings, he moved more cau­tiously. There was no law outside the sterile area.

  He had been traveling in the dry ditch on the right side of the road, instinctively; and the autumn-dried vegetation on either side of him was tall enough to screen him from anyone but an observer concentrating on the ditch with a pair of binoculars. Field grass, coneflower and tansy were mingled along the side of the ditch away from the road; and frequent stalks of milkweed stood stiff and rustling in the wind, their pods split open and emptied at this late stage of the year. Nonetheless, as he came closer to the buildings, he grew more cautious, crouching down so that he could only see the roofs ahead of him above the tops of the vegetation.

  He slowed at last to a stop, less than a hundred yards from the rusted and broken shapes of the gas­oline pumps he could see through the grass and milkweed stems. He was in something of a quandary. If Eileen had taken shelter in the ruins up ahead, then he wanted to get to her as soon as possible. But if there was somebody else instead of her in the buildings, or if others were hold­ing her captive there, the last thing he wanted to do was to walk boldly up to the place in plain sight.

  He turned and left the ditch, crawling on his belly into the grass and weeds of the field to his right. He made a swing of about twenty or thirty meters out into the field and then headed once more toward the house and store, with which he esti­mated he was now level.

  The airsuit was clumsy for crawl­ing along the ground; and it was little enough compensation that here, down against the earth, the wind bothered him a great deal less, so that it seemed much warmer. In fact, with the effort of crawling, he was soon sweating heavily. His knees and elbows were protected from scrapes by the tough material of the airsuit; but rocks and stumps poked and bruised him, while little, sharp lengths of broken grass and weed managed to get in the open neck of his airsuit and down his collar.

  He was working up a good, hot anger at these minor tortures, when a sudden realization checked him and he almost laughed out loud. He had paused to rest a second and catch his breath long enough to swear under it—when it struck him abruptly that, in the face of all common sense, he was enjoying this. The situation might be both dangerous and miser­able; but, except for a few moments on the Mass and after the train wreck, he had never felt so alive in his life. It was something to discover.

  Having rested enough, he contin­ued, less concerned with his minor discomforts and more alert to the general situation he was in. And it was a good thing he was so; for even at that he nearly blundered into trouble.

  If he had not been crawling along with his nose no more than three hand's-breadths above the ground, he would never have noticed the thin, dark transverse line that ap­peared among the weeds just ahead. As it was he saw it without recogniz­ing what it was until he had crawled within inches of it. His first thought was that it was simply a long, thin grass stem fallen on its side. But this theory evaporated as he got closer. Still, it was not until he was actually up against it that he recognized it for what it actually was—a thin, taut wire stretching across the field just below the tops of the weeds.

  Had he been walking he not only would not have seen it until he tripped over it, it would never have occurred to him to look for any such thing in the first place. As it was, en­countering it slowly, he had a chance to think about what it might mean; and the friendly old cluttered attic of his memory helped him out with bits and pieces of information read in the past. The wire could only be there to stop intruders like himself; and it might connect with anything from a warning system to a nearby cache of explosives.

  He lay there, thinking about it. If nothing else, the wire was evidence that there was someone already holed up in the buildings ahead; and if that was so, then Eileen, if she was there at all, was almost undoubtedly 1 prisoner. Charity would not be likely among sick and dying people in this decayed, inhospitable land. But if there were unfriendly people in the buildings—possibly even now keeping a watch—Chaz would have his work cut out for him to get to the buildings without being seen.

  He lifted his head among the weeds to squint at the sky overhead. As always, the sun was invisible be­hind the sullen haze and cloudbank; but from the light he judged that the early winter afternoon was not more than an hour or two from darkness. When the dark came, it would come quickly. There were no lingering sunsets, nowadays—nor any moon or stars visible as guides, once the night had come.

  Just at this moment he stiffened where he lay, like a hunted animal hearing the sounds of its hunters. A voice cried from somewhere far be­hind him, in the opposite direction from the house. The words it called were recognizable, half-chanted, on a high, jeering note: "Rover! Rea Rover! Red Rover, come over . . ."

  The voice died away and there was silence again. He waited; but it did not call again. He looked at the wire once more, and estimated that he could wriggle under it. It had evidently been set high so as to clear all the humps and rises of the ground along its route. He rolled over on his back and began to wriggle forward again.

  Once past the wire, he turned belly-down again and continued on at as good a speed as he could make without thrashing around in the weeds and perhaps drawing atten­tion. He thought that he should not be too far from the relatively open area that had once been a yard sur­rounding the buildings; and in fact, shortly, he came up against the rot­ting stumps of what had once been a wooden fence. He passed this and the ground underne
ath was more even and less littered with stones. Also, here the weeds were not as thickly clustered.

  He was racing now, however, against the end of the daylight, which could not be much more than half an hour off. So far he had en­countered no more wires; but the thought that someone might possibly be watching him from the buildings sent a crawling feeling down his spine. He paused and peered ahead through the now-thin screen of grass and weeds.

  He saw the side of the house, wooden shakes weathered and stained to a near-earth shade. What looked like three grave mounds, two with crosses half fallen down, were in the yard to his right. Above him a couple of broken windows, one above the other, faced in his direc­tion; but there was no sign of anyone peering out of them. To his right was a door, above some broken steps. The door sagged on its hinges and stood slightly ajar inward—in spite of a cleaner, newer piece of board that had been nailed diagonally across its vertical cracks to hold them together. That new board shouted of danger; but the door ajar was an invitation, with night coming on.

  Chaz wormed his way to the wall of the house, and then crawled along the foot of the wall until he came to the door. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his head until he could see around the frame and into the gap where the door hung open.

  It took a long moment for his eyes to adjust to the inner shadow; but when they did, he saw nothing but a small, empty room, and a doorway beyond leading into a further room that seemed to have a window, or some other source of light; for it was quite bright by comparison with the first room.

  Chaz dumped caution and hesita­tion together, and squirmed his way over the threshold into the building. Once inside, he scrambled to his feet quickly, and stood listening. But he heard nothing. A faint unpleasant smell he could not identify troubled him.

  Looking around, he saw a heavy bar leaning against the wall beside the door; and iron spikes driven into the frame and bent up as supports. He reached out for the door and pushed it slightly closed; but it did not creak—surprisingly, it did not creak. He pushed it all the way shut and put the bar in place. Turning, he went further into the building.

  Plainly, it had been a large farm-type home once upon a time, but its rooms were empty now, except for spider webs, dust and rubble. He went all through the rooms on the ground floor before realizing that the smell that bothered him was coming from upstairs.

  Cautiously, he took the broad but broken stairs, lit by a paneless win­dow on the landing above them. As he went up the smell grew rapidly stronger. He followed it to its source in a room on the floor above; and found what he was after.

  He stepped into a room which had a piece of transparent plastic—non­refractive, as glass would not have been—stretched across its single, tall window. A small iron stove, unlit, stood in one corner, with a stovepipe going through the wall behind it. In the room were sacks and boxes, tools, and two old-fashioned rifles, a battered overstuffed chair and a wide bed. On the bed lay Eileen; and on the floor near the door, as if he had dragged himself, or had been drag­ged that far before the effort gave out, was what was left of a man. It was the source of the smell that had caught Chaz' attention. Up here the stench was sickeningly strong.

  Almost choking, Chaz got a grip on the collar of the heavy plastic jacket the dead man was wearing and hauled the whole thing out of the room, down the stairs and to the door by which he had entered. He unbarred the door, rolled it out, then closed and barred the door again. He went back up the stairs, two at a time, to Eileen.

  She was lying on her back on the bed, still in her jumpsuit. Chaz fanned the door to the room back and forth hastily to drive a little fresh air inside, and then went to her. She was half-covered by a very old, but surprisingly clean, blanket. As he watched, however, she mut­tered something and threw it off. Her eyes were half open, her cheeks were pink, and she licked her lips as if she was very thirsty.

  ". . . The Park," she murmured. "You promised, Mommy. The Park's open today . . ."

  "Eileen," he said, touching the back of his fingers gently to her fore­head. "Eileen, it's me. Chaz."

  The skin of her forehead burned against his fingers. She flinched away from his touch.

  "You promised," she said, "we could go to the Park . . ."

  He reached down and unsealed the collar of her jumpsuit. In the late daylight filtering through the trans­parent plastic on the window, he could just make out small reddish areas on. the slim column of her neck. Not ulcers, yet, but inflamed patches. That, and the terribly high fever—the first signs of sickening with the Rot.

  She must have been outside the sterile areas four or five days al­ready, and inhaled the rot-spores im­mediately when she was put out, to show signs this far advanced.

  "You promised . . ." she said, rolling her head on the bed from side to side. "Mommy, you promised me . . ."

  XI

  His first thought was to get her some water. Looking around the dim room he caught sight of a five-gallon milk can not far from the stove. He went to it and lifted it. It was heavy and sloshed with contained liquid. He worked off the tight, heavy cover and saw a colorless liquid within.

  Cautiously, he tasted it. It was cer­tainly water—how clean and how pure, there was no way of telling. On the other hand, this was no situation in which he could pick and choose. A small aluminum pan with a bent handle hung from a nail in the wall nearby. He half-filled the pan with water and, taking it back to the bed, managed to lift Eileen's head and get her to drink. When she realized there was water at her lips, she drank thirstily, but without coming out of the delirium of her fever.

  He took the empty pan back to its nail and set about examining the room they were in. The removal of the dead body and the door he had left open had improved the air con­siderably; but the coolness of the place was now beginning to be no­ticeable. It could be frigid in here be­fore dawn.

  A distant, crying voice halted him like the sudden pressure of a gun muzzle against his ribs.

  "Rover, Oh, Rover ... Red Rover . . ."

  The cry came from outside some­where. But, if his ears were right, not from the same quarter of the open fields as the earlier voice, which had sounded behind him. A moment later his hearing was vindicated, as the voice he had first heard called again, this time plainly from the same direction as before.

  "Rover. Red Rover . . ."

  It had barely finished before two other voices sounded, each from yet another direction. He stepped quickly to the window and looked out.

  He saw nothing. He squinted against the feeble glare of the red-stained clouds behind which the sun must be almost on the horizon; but he still saw nothing. Looking back into the room, he let his eyes adjust and glanced around. If the dead man he had just gotten rid of had been holed up here, he might have had some means of observation—

  He found what he was looking for: a pair of heavy binoculars hung by their strap almost beside the win­dow. He had stared right at them earlier, without recognizing the pur­pose in their position. He reached for them now and held them to his eyes.

  They were powerful—possibly even 7x10—and for a long moment as the light faded, he could not hold them steady enough to sweep a hill­top area a few hundred meters away. Then he got one elbow braced against the window frame on one side, and began to look along the hilltop.

  He saw nothing, and was just about to put the glasses away again when a figure rose to its feet as cas­ually as if it was on a street back in one of the sterile areas. Chaz had already lowered the binoculars and he saw the figure without their aid. He jerked the binoculars back to his eyes and hunted for the shape he had just seen, sweeping past it twice before he could hold it steady in his field of amplified vision.

  It was a man wearing a bulky red sweater and the lower half of a jumpsuit. In the binoculars, he seemed to leap forward at Chaz—it was like looking at him from an ac­tual distance of less than a dozen meters. Chaz blinked—for he had seen the face before. It was the face of the man he had seen sprawled, apparently dead, beside the
wrecked railway motor cart and spilled car­tons, when the train in which Chaz had been wrecked was halted by an apparent sabotage attempt miles be­fore the real thing stopped it.

  Chaz continued to stare at the face he recognized. This man was not dead—in fact, he was looking damned healthy considering the ul­cer spots Chaz had seen on his neck before the train wreck and which were still there now. As Chaz looked, the man cupped his hands on either side of his mouth and shouted in the direction of the buildings.

  "Rover! Red Rover! Red Rover, come over . . ."

  The cry seemed to linger under the darkening sky and the red-streaked clouds behind the man. Then he took one quick step backward, as if he stepped down below the brow of the hill, and disappeared.

  As if his going had been a signal, the red streaks began to fade, the little glare dwindled from the clouds; and the light began to fade with a rapidity that woke Chaz sud­denly to an awareness of his situ­ation.

  He hung the binoculars hastily on their nail and turned. Somewhere in here, there must be some means of making a light. He looked instinc­tively toward the stove and saw nothing useful there. He looked about the room, and actually looked past—before he had the sense to bring his eye back to it—an antique oil lamp. Its appearance was a cross between that of a gravy boat and a pointed-toe slipper, badly modeled in cheap crockery, standing on the table in the room.

  It was, in fact, an imitation of an ancient lamp from the Mediterra­nean area. He had seen the same sort of thing advertised as an aid to medi­tation. He pounced on it, found it half-filled with liquid and with a rag of porous towel-plastic stuck in its spout-end for a wick. There was a quite modern fusion incense lighter on the table beside the lamp, and a second later he had the wick lit. A wavery illumination from the bare flame lit up the room.