Cemetery World (13 page)

“There may have been no mark,” I said. 

“Why, there must have been,” said Cynthia. “How else would they know where to dig?”

“How about someone in the Cemetery working with them? Some insider who would know which graves to dig?”

“You are both forgetting something,” Elmer said. “Maybe our ghoulish friends aren’t really interested in those trinkets in the boxes …”

“But they took them,” Cynthia said. “Sure, they’d take them. They may be interesting and amusing. They might even have some trade value. But it seems to me it is the metal they really would be after. Metal, after all these years, would be hard to come by. At first it could be picked up in the cities, but after a time much of the cities—metal would be badly corroded and you’d have to mine for it. But in the Cemetery there is more recent metal, perhaps much better metal. The artifacts they find in some of the graves have value for us because we have been told by Professor Thorndyke they are significant, but I doubt they have value for these robbers. Toys for the children, geegaws for the women, perhaps minor trading stock—but it’s the metal they are after.”

“This business explains one thing,” I said. “It sheds some light on why Cemetery wants to keep control of visitors. They wouldn’t want to take a chance of someone finding out about the artifacts.”

“It’s not illegal,” Cynthia said.

“No, of course it’s not. The archaeologists have tried for years to get legislation halting the trade in artifacts, but they’ve been unable to.”

“It’s sneaky, though,” said Elmer, “and unprincipled. It’s an underhanded business. If it should leak out, it might do much to tarnish Cemetery’s shiny reputation.”

“But they let us go,” said Cynthia.

“There wasn’t much at the moment they could have done about it,” I said. “There was no way they could stop us.”

“They did something later,” said Elmer. “They tried to blow up Bronco.”

Cynthia said, “If they’d destroyed Bronco, they figured we would get discouraged …”

“I think that is right,” I said. “Although we can’t be absolutely sure about the bomb.”

“We can be fairly sure,” said Elmer.

“There’s one thing about it I don’t like,” I said. “Without half trying, we’ve managed to make enemies of everyone we’ve met. There is Cemetery and now this band of ghouls, and I would suppose the people back at the settlement do not think too kindly of us. Because of us they lost some haystacks and a barn and maybe some of them may have been hurt and …”

“They brought it on themselves,” said Elmer.

“That won’t stop them blaming us.”

“I suppose it won’t,” said Elmer.

“I think we should get out of here,” I said.

“You and Miss Cynthia need some sleep.”

I looked across the fire at her. “We can stay awake for a few hours more,” I said. She nodded bleakly at me.

“We’ll take along the horses,” Elmer said. “That will slow them up. We can get their stuff loaded up …”

“Why bother with it,” I said. “Leave it here. It does us no good. What could we do with it?”

“Why, sure,” said Elmer. “Why couldn’t I have thought of that? When they come back they’ll have to leave some men to guard it and that splits up their force.”

“They’ll follow us,” said Cynthia. “They have to have those horses.”

“Sure they will,” said Elmer, “and when they finally find the horses, if they ever do, we’ll be miles away and out of reach.”

Bronco spoke, for the first time. “But the human two. They cannot go minus sleep. They cannot go for hours.”

“We’ll figure something out,” said Elmer. “Let’s get going.”

“About the census-taker and the ghosts?” asked Cynthia, asking, so far as I could see, without any reason.

“Let’s not worry about the ghosts,” I said.

She’d asked the same question once before. It was just like a woman. Get into some sort of trouble and they’ll come up with the silly questions.

Chapter 13

I woke and it was night, but immediately I remembered what had happened and where we were. I raised up to a sitting position and to one side of me saw the dark form that was Cynthia. She was still asleep. Just a few hours more, I thought, and Elmer and Bronco would be back and we could be on our way. It had been all damn foolishness, I told myself. We could have kept on with them. I had been sleepy, certainly, and riding a horse for the first time in my life had not been an easy chore, but I could have managed. Cynthia had been played out, but we could have strapped her onto Bronco so that if she fell asleep she would not have fallen off, but Elmer had insisted on leaving us behind while he and Bronco shagged the horses deep into the mountains that loomed ahead of us.

“There can’t nothing happen,” he had said. “This cave is comfortable and well hidden and by the time you’ve had some sack time we’ll be back again. There is nothing to it.”

I blamed myself. I should not have let him talk us into it. I didn’t like it, I told myself. We should have stayed together. No matter what had happened, we should have stayed together.

A shadow stirred near the mouth of the cave and a soft voice said, “Friend, please do not make an outcry. There is nothing you must fear.”

I came surging to my feet, the hair prickling at the nape of my neck. “Who the hell are you?” I shouted.

“Softly, softly, softly,” said the voice, softly. “There are those who must not hear.”

Cynthia screamed.

“Shut up!” I yelled at her.

“You must be quiet,” said the lurker in the shadows. “You do not recognize me, but I saw you at the dance.”

Cynthia, on the verge of another scream, caught her breath and gulped. “It’s the census-taker,” she said. “What does he want here?”

“I come, fair one,” said the census-taker, “to warn you of great danger.”

“You would,” I said, but I did not say it loudly, for all this business of his about talking softly and not making any outcry had sunken into me.

“The wolves,” he said. “The metal wolves have been set upon your trail.”

“What can we do about it?”

“You stay very quiet,” said the census-taker, “and hope that they pass by.”

“Where are all your pals?” I asked.

“They are around somewhere. They are often with me. They hide when they first meet people. They are a little shy. If they like you they’ll come out.”

“They weren’t shy at the dance the other night,” said Cynthia.

“They were among old friends. They had been there before.”

“You said something about wolves,” I reminded him. “Metal wolves, I think.”

“If you’ll come most softly to the entrance, I think that you might see them. But please to be most quiet.”

Cynthia was close beside me and I put out my hand to her and she grabbed it and hung on tight.

“Metal wolves,” she said.

“Robots, more than likely.” I don’t know why I was so calm about it. Stupidity, I guess. In the last two days we had encountered so many screwy things that metal wolves, at first, didn’t seem too bad. Just sort of commonplace.

Outside the cave mouth the moon lighted up the landscape. The trees stood out almost as plain as if it had been day and in between them ran little grassy places dotted with boulders. It was wild, rough country and, somehow, it sent a shiver through me.

We crouched just inside the entrance and there was not a thing to see, just the trees and the grassy patches and the boulders and beyond them the dark lift of hills fearsome in their darkness.

“I don’t …” Cynthia began, but the census-taker clucked at her and she said no more.

We crouched, the two of us, hand in hand, and it seemed a silly business. There was nothing stirring; not even the trees, for there was no wind.

Then there was a movement in the shadow underneath a tree and a moment later the thing that had made the movement trotted out into the open. It glittered in the moonlight and it had about it a sense of fiendish strength and ferocity. It was the size of a calf, perhaps, although because of the moonlight and the distance, the size was hard to judge. It was lithe and quick, with a nervousness about it, stepping high and daintily, but there was in its metal body a feel of power that could be perceived even from some hundreds of feet away. It quartered nervously about, as if it might be seeking out a scent and for a moment it switched about and stared directly at us—stared and seemed to strain toward us, as if someone might have held it on a leash and it yearned to break away.

Then it turned and took up its running back and forth and all at once there were three instead of one of them—slipping through the moonlight, running in the woods.

One of them, as it turned toward us in its running, opened its mouth, or what would have been its mouth had it been a biologic creature, exposing a seried rank of metal teeth. When it shut its mouth, the clash of the teeth coming back together came clear to us, crouching in the cave.

Cynthia was pressing close against me and I disengaged my hand from hers, put my arm about her and held her very close, not thinking of her, I am sure, as a woman in that moment, but as another human being, another thing of flesh and blood that metal teeth could rend. Clutching one another, we watched the wolves, seeking, running—I got the impression they were slavering—and, somehow the idea crept into my mind that they knew we were nearby and were seeking us.

Then they were gone. As quickly as they had appeared, they disappeared, and we did not see them go. But we still stayed crouching there, afraid to speak, afraid to move. How long we stayed, I do not know.

Then fingers tapped against my shoulder. “They are gone,” the census-taker said. I had, until he tapped me, forgotten about the census-taker.

“They were confused,” he said. “Undoubtedly the horses milled around down there while you were being installed in the cave before your companions went away. It took them a while to work out the trail.”

Cynthia tried to speak and choked, the words dying in her throat. I knew exactly how it was; my own mouth was so dry I wondered if I would ever speak again.

She tried again and made it. “I thought they were looking for us. I thought they knew we were somewhere near.”

“It is over now,” the census-taker said. “The present danger’s past. Why don’t we move back into the cave and be comfortable?”

I rose, dragging Cynthia up with me. My muscles were tense and knotted from staying still so long in such an uncomfortable position. After staring so long out into the moonlight, the cave was dark as pitch, but I groped along the wall, found our piles of sacks and baggage and, sitting down, leaned against them. Cynthia sat down beside me.

The census-taker squatted down in front of us. We couldn’t really see him because the robe he wore was as black as the inside of the cave. All one could see of him was the whiteness of his face, a pasty blob in the darkness, a blob without any features.

“I suppose,” I said, “that we should thank you.”

He made a shrugging motion. “One seldom comes on allies,” he said. “When one does he makes the most of it, does whatever is possible to do.”

There were moving shadows in the cave, flickering shadows. Either they had just arrived or I had failed to notice them before. Now they were everywhere.

“Have you called in your people?” Cynthia asked, and from the tightness of her voice I guessed what it must have cost to keep it level.

“They have been here all the time,” said the census-taker. “It takes them a little to show themselves. They come on slow and easy. They have no wish to frighten.”

“It is difficult,” said Cynthia, “not to be frightened by ghosts. Or do you call them something else?”

“A better term,” said the census-taker, “might be shades.”

“Why shades?” I asked.

“The reason,” said the census-taker, “is one of somewhat involved semantics that would require an evening to explain. I am not sure I entirely understand myself. But it is the term they do prefer.”

“And you?” I asked. “Exactly what are you?”

“I do not understand,” said the census-taker.

“Look, we are humans. These other folks are shades. The creatures we were watching were robots—metal wolves. A matter of classification. How are you classified?”

“Oh, that,” said the census-taker. “That really is quite simple. I am a census-taker.”

“And the wolves,” said Cynthia. “I suppose they are Cemetery.”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said the census-taker, “although now only rarely used. In the early days there was much work for them to do.”

I was puzzled. “What kind of work?” I asked.

“Monsters,” said the census-taker and I could see that he did not want to talk about it.

The shades had stopped their incessant fluttering and were beginning to settle down so that one could see or at least guess at the shape of them.

“They like you,” said the census-taker. “They know you’re on their side.”

“We’re not on anyone’s side,” I told him. “We’re just running like hell to keep from getting clipped. Ever since we arrived there has been someone taking potshots at us.” One of the shades had squatted down beside the census-taker, shedding, as it did so, some of its nebulous, misty quality and becoming not solid by any means, but a little more solid. One still had a sense of being able to see through them, but the swirly lines had stilled and the outlines were sharper, and this squatting thing looked something like a rather arty drawing made upon a blackboard with a piece of chalk.

“If you do not mind,” said the arty piece of drawing, “I will introduce myself. My name was one that in the days long since struck terror on the planet Prairie, which is a strange name for a planet, but easily explained, because it is a very great planet, somewhat larger than the Earth and with land masses that are considerably larger than the areas of the oceans and all that land is flat, with no mountain, and all the land is prairie. There is no winter since the winds blow wild and free and the heat from the planet’s sun is equitably distributed over the entire planetary surface. We settlers of Prairie lived in an eternal summer. We were, of course, humans from the planet Earth, our forebears landing on Prairie in their third migration outward into the galaxy, hopping from one planet to another in an attempt to find better living space, and on Prairie we found it—but perhaps not the way you think. We built no great cities, for reasons which I may explain later, but not now, since it would take too long to tell. Rather, we became roaming nomads with our flocks and herds, which is, perhaps a more satisfactory way of life than any other man has been able to devise. There dwelt upon this planet a native population of most slimy, most ferocious and sneaky devils that refused to cooperate in any way with us and which did their best, in various nefarious ways, to do away with us. I started out, I think, to introduce myself, then forgot to tell my name. It is a good Earth name, for my family and my clan were always very careful to keep alive the heritage of Earth and—“