Baby Is Three (34 page)

“The same thing’s true of the Druids. ‘Druid’ isn’t the name of a religious sect, by the way; it’s a title, like ‘chancellor’ or ‘minister’. They’re metempsychotics too, but for the dark powers. I’m neutral. I imagine I’m a sort of recording device for the Great Ones.”

“And how did the one force get crippled?”

“These guidances are put among humans in human terms. The antichrist was baptized! His mother confessed her visitation to a man who had the power to do it. And that is Merlin—fully possessed of the dark powers, but unable to use them for their intended purposes!”

“And the Grail?”

“Pure and simple, a power source. That jewel is a reservoir of vital energy. It was left in charge of a line of kings—the most cohesive
form of authority at that time—and of them, the revered Arthur pen Dragon … I hope I’m not knocking over any childhood idols.”

“Not mine,” said Guinn sullenly.

“King Arthur was a petty, self-righteous little martinet with a weak mind and a strong arm. He fell in accord with a renegade Druid who got him to turn the Grail completely to the powers of light. It shouldn’t be denied them, of course; but neither should it be monopolized. The Grail itself, in its symbolized chalice form, was put into an immaterial form, keyed to the very special aura of a certain kind of man, a man
who couldn’t exist as long as the dark powers were crippled!

“So we—Merlin and I—searched until we found suitable material, and then made what environmental changes we could until we got one. You. Percival almost made it, but not quite. He wasn’t—well—dirty enough.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s been tough sledding. Merlin had to keep his powers under forced draft by any means he could. That ritual you saw is one of the ways. The combination of auras of hypnotized animals, a virgin, oak, mistletoe and fresh-killed mammals is a tremendous recharge. With the Grail it won’t be necessary.”

“And Mordi?”

“A madman. Happened to be a genealogist and found that he was of the true pen Dragon stock—the last of the pure line, most fortunately. Got to fooling around with old rituals and found that the Druids, even Merlin himself, were bound to him. He wanted the Grail as a personal power-source—which, God knows, it certainly is.”

Guinn drove thoughtfully for a while. Then, “I called him Mordred.”

Morgan laughed. “There may be more pattern behind this than anyone—even Merlin and I—know. For we have a Gareth and his Lynette; we had a Percival, the good man who almost had the Grail. And Mordred, the deputy King who turned so evil.”

“There was a gasp from the back seat. Lynn said, “Mordi—he saw the Grail. He’ll live eight days?”

“At least,” said Morgan cheerfully. And Guinn, holding the wheel, saw a flash of that bodiless head, blinking and tonguing up at him. Then he thought of Gary propped up against the cave entrance, dying, and watching … and he drove without speaking.

“So it’s up to you, chum,” said Morgan. “Give Merlin the Grail, and restore some balance to this rock, or don’t, and we’ll keep on building Babel.”

“Excalibur and the atom, is that it? Wait. The atom bomb is a disruptive dark-power device if anything ever was. Right?”

“Right,” said Morgan. “A feeble victory for Merlin’s side. It’s the H-bomb we’re worried about. That’s
fusion—
that’s building. Darling, if you give Merlin the Grail, that damned thing … won’t … work!”

Garry said, weakly, “Hey, boss. Just who are you?”

When Guinn didn’t answer, Morgan laughed and said, “He’s Hadley Guinn. He got his last name from the only name anyone knew his mother by. It was Guinevere. He called himself Hadley because he got sick and tired of getting kidded about his real name.” She hugged him. “In a couple thousand years, he’ll get over that.”

Guinn took a deep breath and said it, all by himself—the one word that had been anathema to him all his life, that had poisoned the whole Round Table legend for him.

“Galahad,” he said. “By God, I’m Galahad, that’s who I am!”

And when they test the H-bomb, you’ll know what he decided.

I
T
’
S SMALLER
, G
ARTH
thought as he lay on his belly on top of the hill and looked down, through carefully parted branches, at Gesell Hall. The Hall had towered over him when he was a child, last year, last week, last night, in his dreams. And now, at the moment he had schooled himself for, waited for since the day his world had ended, he could feel no thrill, no triumph—only it’s smaller.

The great building, with its rambling wings, its twisted, broken power receptor antennae, its yellow weed-grown courts, lay as if in the hollow of some mighty neck, with a cliff and a mountain shoulder shrugging it into its crowded, cluttered, sheltered state.

I should have known, he thought. I was only a kid when I left—when the Ffanx—

He lost himself in the restimulated dream, the clear mental picture of his toy spaceship, hovering in midair on a pillar of koolflame fire, and his child’s dream of worlds, and then the shrill thunder of jets—real jets, Ffanx jets—which had brought an end to his dream and his childhood and his world.

Garth Gesell slipped a long-fingered hand under his abdomen and hauled out a knobby root which rowelled him.
It was there
, he thought,
right there by the main building. The Ffanx came, and I ran around to the front and through the double doors, and right in to Dad and Mooley. And the roof came down, and Mooley, the cat, ran through fire and was naked and agonized, and then there was Dad’s head with a splinter through the bridge of his nose and the end of it in a ruined eye, talking to me … talking out of a mountain of rubble, out of torture, out of gentleness and greatness, asking me to save a race and a world and a system …

Well, he was back. Not back home, for this was enemy territory now. All the backslid, savage world was enemy territory for anyone
who ventured out of his settlement, and Garth’s adopted village was many a long day’s march behind him. Behind him, too, were years of growth and training and of living with the nagging, driving force of his childhood promise to his father: I shall open the Gateway.

“I shall open the Gateway.” He said it aloud, intensely, in a deep re-dedication to his father’s wish. And then he threw himself violently to one side.

His watchful subconscious, his trained hearing, were a shade too slow to avoid the blow completely. The short, stubby spear whacked him painfully between the shoulder-blades instead of burying itself in his back. He rolled back over it, snatching it up as he rolled, and bounced to his feet in a single fluid motion, striking upward with the spear. He got a quick impression of a tall, wide, golden figure which, without moving its feet, bent gracefully aside to avoid the spear’s hungry point. Then there was a sharp blow on Garth’s wrist and the spear went flying end over end into the undergrowth.

Garth stood, shaken and helpless, grasping his wrist, and looked up into the easy smile of the stranger.

“Move fast, don’t you?” said the man. He had a broad, cleancut face and the rasping, rapid speech of a Northerner. He stood with his thick legs apart, the knees slightly flexed. Garth had the impression that from that stance the man could move instantly in any direction, including straight up. “But not fast enough for Bronze,” the man added.

Garth understood the name and the reason for it—the golden skin and yellow hair, the rivet-studded belt and boots were obviously a personal trade-mark. In his hand Bronze held a polished throwing-stick, the source of the stubby, bullet-like spear. He slowly whacked the end of it into a wide, horny palm as he studied Garth. “What are you after?”

Garth thumbed over his shoulder at the crumbling building down in the green hollow. “What do you call that place?”

“Gesell.”

“I am Gesell too.”

Bronze’s face turned into a mask. He stepped past Garth, dropping his throwing-stick into the quiver of spears which hung behind
his right shoulder. He stooped and picked up Garth’s weapon and handed it back to him.

Garth carefully avoided saying, “Thanks.”

“I heard you say you’d open the Gateway.”

Garth nodded.

Bronze said, “Could I help you?” and in that moment Garth knew he’d won. He suppressed a smile. “I don’t need help,” he said.

“You might,” said Bronze.

Garth shrugged as if he didn’t care. In reality, he cared a great deal. He had known for a long time that he’d have to recruit some help, and he liked the looks of those big shoulders, and of the obvious skill that had gone into the man’s trappings and weapons. “What’s it to you if I open the Gateway?”

Bronze licked his lips. Then, with no attempt to conceal his motives, he said, “There’s women in there. Thousands of ’em. The best, the smartest on this world or off it.” He paused. “I come here all the time. I sit up here and look down at the Hall and try to figure a way in.” He spread his big hands. “If you were trying to stop me from getting to those women, I wanted to kill you. If you can help me get to them, I’m on your side. All the way. See?”

“Fair enough,” said Garth, and let the grin come through this time. “Not enough women around here for you?”

“Not enough women in the whole damn world. Seven in Prellton—that’s my village—and a hundred men. Over the hill there, in Haddon’s Town, there’s twice as many women and three times as many men.”

“So you want the Gateway open so you can cut loose with the whole lot of ’em?”

“Me?” cried Bronze. “No, man, I just want one. Just one woman, all for me.”

“I see you’re a reasonable man,” said Garth, smiling. “You can go with me.”

Bronze looked as if Garth had given him a kingdom, and a pair of wings to boot. “I heard of you Gesells.”

“You heard of my father,” said Garth.

“They still tell stories about him.”

If there has to be a shrine, there’s bound to be a legend, thought Garth. “Why didn’t you try breaking into the Hall?”

“Some tried, one time or another,” said Bronze. He cast a quick, fearful glance down into the hollow. “They’re all dead.”

“That’s what I heard.” Garth studied Bronze thoughtfully. “Ever see it happen?”

“Once.” Bronze swung his spear quiver off his shoulder and squatted on the bank, running the spears nervously through his thick fingers as he spoke, testing their points, their grooved hafts. “I was to watch, me and Rob O’Bennet and his fighting-boys. Flan of Haddon’s Town and his men got the main assault because they have the larger settlement. We were to storm down and back them once they’d breached the Hall.” He paused and wet his lips. His amber eyes were haunted. “Two Guardians the Hall had, then as now—two only, just two against the two hundred of us. Flan’s boys raised a yell you could hear over the mountain, and charged. Not a sign of life from the Hall until they were half across the court there—” he pointed—“and then the Guardians stepped out, one from the north corner, one from the south, by the little door. There was blast of green fire the like of which words won’t handle.” Bronze covered his eyes as he spoke. “I saw it stretch between the two Guardians for a half second, and then I was dazzle-blinded.

“When I could see again my brave boys were gone, leaving me writhing my burned eyes into the grass here. And down there in the court lay Flan and thirty-eight of his boys, smoking and black.”

He paused while the terrifying picture died behind his eyes. “Afterward,” he said, “a party of us went over to Haddon’s Town to see if so many dead hadn’t left a widow for us, but they had the place well-stockaded.”

Garth made no comment. “Tell me what you know of the Guardians.”

“I’ll tell you little enough,” said Bronze. “But if I said what I’d heard I’d be talking a month or more. All you ever see of them is that pointed cowl and the long habit that goes to the ground. Some say they’re men and women—or were. Some say they’re monsters from the other side of the Gateway.”

“We’ll soon see,” said Garth.

“You’re a Gesell,” said Bronze, his voice hoarse with suppressed excitement. “You can just walk in like a guest.”

“I can not,” said Garth shortly. “I hate to disappoint you, Bronze, but a lot of water has gone over the dam since the Ffanx conquered us. My father built the Gateway twenty years ago, thinking that it would guard those women for the month or so it took to smash the Ffanx. They killed my father and closed the Gateway. And by then the world was a ruin, with the women gone and the men fighting over the handful who were left, and the secret of the Gateway locked up in the brain of an eight-year-old child. And now the Hall is a shrine, and the guards are Guardians, science is magic and each part of the world fights every other part.”

“What are you saying? You can’t just walk in, and you a Gesell?”

“Everything’s changed,” said Garth patiently. “I’ve listened to every traveler’s tale, read every record—there are damned few enough—and it all comes to the one stupidity: I am the only man alive who can open the Gateway, and those dedicated fools down there will kill me on sight if I go near it.

“How do I know you’re a Gesell?” said Bronze, in reawakened suspicion.

“You don’t,” said Garth. Without looking up or turning, he made one sudden, brief movement. The tube seemed to leap from his right holster into his hand. “Look, Bronze.”

Bronze’s face went stony. “What is it? What is that thing?”

Garth pressed the stud on the side of the tube. A beam of light leaped from the tube to bathe Bronze’s terrified face. The big man cried out, and then sat frozen, eyes shut in terror. Garth turned it off and dropped it back into the holster. “My name is Gesell,” he said conversationally, “but I don’t give a hub-forted damn if you believe it or not.”

“What was it?” What did it do? That light, that white light—”

“Just light,” said Garth, and laughed. He slapped the big man on his meaty shoulder. “Stop your chattering.”

“You shouldn’t ‘a done that,” said Bronze hoarsely. “You didn’t
have to scare me like that, Gesell. I said I’d help. I wasn’t backing out. I believe you.”

“Good. Now shut up and let me figure this out.”