The Books of the Wars (4 page)

" . . . of hell, although I must own that Purgatory seems like a better term; more varied, you know.

"The map itself represents an unknown percentage of the World. Beyond its precincts lie, one would suppose, more lands and seas and oceans, but of them we have not even legends. But for all intents and purposes, this map will be more than adequate." Toriman got up from his chair again and stood before the glimmering charts; he lit another cigar and used it like a pointer. "Now, here we are. Around us, of course, are ringed our neighboring states. Direct your attention, if you please, to our northernmost province, number 18, which goes by the name of Tarbormin, I believe. Up there, in those desolate highlands, lies a lake, unnamed, from which springs a river, also unnamed. It flows down, out onto this plain"—tracing the course of an incredibly thin streak of blue with the glowing cigar—"where it crosses into our illustrious and thoroughly detestable sister state of Yuma.

"It continues across Yuma, having acquired a name, the Tyne, and quite a bit more water, past the Armories, and finally down into the Imperial Vale where it is lost to common knowledge.

"Once into the Vale, the Tyne becomes quite a large river. In one spot, Bloody Ford, it's almost a mile across. That name is mine, I'm afraid." Toriman's voice shifted slightly, away from the tone of absolute command. "The 42nd had been pursuing bandits and we were quite taken up in the chase until the half-men and their wild dogs set upon us." Toriman gazed off into the pulsating darkness for a moment and then returned his eyes to the map. "Forgive me, Limpkin, I will try to stick to essentials; but there are so many memories here, all either bitter or awesome ones, never beautiful, except for one." Again his eyes wandered, this time to the northern reaches of the World where the coastline dissolves into a shattered patchwork of fjords and inlets. The tight skin went slack about his face and his eye-pits fell to the cold marble floor. "Again, Limpkin, your pardon. This is almost turning into an expedition into a life I would rather forget."

"A woman?" Limpkin questioned, hardly knowing he had said it.

"Yes," replied Toriman in a distracted manner. Limpkin was mildly astounded that Toriman was capable of even approaching such a thing as affection.

"And now?"

"Dead, for this was in my youth, so very, very long ago; dead by my own hand, I suppose, but that was in the days when we still used the Plague as a tactical weapon." He. shook his head like a man rising from a heavy sleep. "The Tyne," he continued abruptly, the scarred skin again drawn tautly against the skull, the eyes flashing in their dark sockets; so sudden was the change that Limpkin instantly dropped the thought of questioning the General on a point: that the Caroline Army had never used the Plague as a weapon because of its unpredictability. "The Tyne exits the Imperial Vale here, after about six hundred miles, and curves southward until it finally reaches down to here." Toriman outlined an area near the bottom of the map. "It enters the Black Barrens where, through some ancient wizardry, or more likely radiation poisoning, the land is as sterile as an operating theater. Finally the Tyne flows into the sea, whose probing arm you can just see here along the bottom of the map; here we find our elusive goal.

"On the western side of the delta stands the Tyne Fortress, which I told you about earlier, and on the other bank, the eastern one, lie the Yards."

"Yards . . . ?" Once again Limpkin was totally in the dark.

Toriman looked slightly exasperated. "No legends? Curious, the people of western Yuma certainly have enough about it." Toriman resumed his seat and picked several sheets of paper from a folder. "Briefly, the Yards are an enigmatic, to say the least, expanse of concrete situated on the banks of the Tyne delta. I have no absolutely sure information on who might have built them, for what purpose, or anything along those lines; but I can guess that the Fortress and a rather curious structure several miles upriver called Gun Hill were constructed for its defense." The General looked at the papers on the desk for a moment. "Just as an aside of no significance, all the main armament of the Fortress and what is left of Gun Hill's battery are pointed west; but all of these affairs are of great antiquity so I shouldn't think that any menace they were supposed to combat is still alive.

"The Yards themselves are approximately four miles wide, five where they reach down to the Sea, and about nine miles long. Along the middle of this field, and running about ninety percent of its length, is a huge elevated ramp or slipway of truly titanic dimensions; this ramp runs into the Sea and drops off into an excavated trench leading to deep water. All about the Yards lie mile upon mile of rail track with what appear to be carriages for cranes still on them and in operating condition.

"There are huge storage caverns emplaced under the surface of the concrete, which are filled with more machinery and equipment; also, there are vast rooms apparently devoted to the design of—but more of that later.

"I spent quite some time in and around the Yards—I was almost killed when I strayed into one of the Fortress' minefields. One can still trace out what must have been a complex of roads leading away from the Yards and through what I think may be the remains of a town that surrounded them. Of these ruins, there is little except for a spectacular tower located in the middle of the Delta. Its name was Westwatch; once it might have been tied to the Yards and the Fortress by several large bridges, but this is almost pure speculation.

"So here we have four structures. The tower is but a hollow shell now, but its thousand foot height might have been used to watch for whatever the Fortress was supposed to fight. But it would be best to leave the Fortress alone, for I suspect that despite its fantastic age the equipment inside of it is still quite alive and eminently capable of accomplishing its purpose: killing. Then there is Gun Hill. Who can fathom it? Huge, incomprehensible machines which remind my military mind of nothing so much as the mounts for siege cannon." Toriman paused for a sip of wine.

"I am astounded," mumbled Limpkin in a dazed voice. "They must have been incredible men."

"If they were men at all. No, now don't look so surprised." Toriman's expression changed from one of complete command to one of perplexed doubt; the eyebrows arched and the lips were tightly pursed. The voice, usually so beautifully sure and commanding or reaching downward for some lost, gentle sorrow, was now halting and confused. "I know very little of those that built the Yards and the Fortress and I can only express a personal opinion of them: they were not"—the General stopped uneasily and searched for the words—"not of my kind of flesh and blood. They were
different,
Limpkin, and fanatically dedicated to ideals totally at odds with those I hold eternally sacred; I can only feel this, smell it in the wind that blows from Gun Hill or the Fortress, but I feel it as strongly as I feel the strength of Caltroon's walls. There is an essence inhabiting those ruins which I cannot help but feel would, if given physical substance, try to kill me. Lord, just talking about it brings a fear to my heart; can you feel it too, Limpkin?"

Limpkin said yes, he did, but in a guarded tone, for while he knew that anything Toriman could fear should have thrown him into a panic, all he could feel was a great deal of puzzlement at the General's reaction and an irrepressible sense of worshipful pride in hearing of the great buildings. It was almost as if he had been descended from the race that Toriman now said he hated. Limpkin thought it best to try to return the conversation to its original course. "But what has this to do with us? The builders are dead, they must be, for such great power in the hands of the living could hardly have escaped the World's notice."

Toriman brightened at this. "Quite right, Limpkin; just a personal opinion, but one which I think you will share more closely when you see the Yards for yourself. But even if you do not feel it as strongly as I when you look upon the land, you will feel a deep fear for the countries that surround it and us. And if not fear, then hate; the World is up to here with it. The World is your hell, my purgatory; it is a . . . "

" . . . prison," Limpkin again filled in unexpectedly; Toriman's mask-face broke into something really approaching a wide grin.

"Precisely. And when a man is unjustly condemned to a prison, what is his first desire?"

"Why, to escape, naturally."

"Again right. But in our case the prison, the World, is so escapeproof that the sheer weight of despair has weighed us down and killed hope itself. This is why that sleeping bit of motivation has never awakened. Even if it did, it would probably die of starvation. Despair, Limpkin, is the key. What we need is the antithesis of despair: hope."

"Obviously, but isn't this just . . . "

The General held up his hand. "From the brief sketch I have given you, what do the Yards sound like they were built for?"

Limpkin thought for a moment. "A shipyard?" he asked in a cracked voice.

Toriman's fear of a moment ago was now completely banished by this new factor. "Yes, quite, exactly. A shipyard, the obvious conclusion. And I will further confess to you that any ships that might have issued from the Yards did not sail upon any sea."

"Meaning?"

"The night sky . . . "

"A starship!" Limpkin almost screamed with rage that Toriman should climax his tale with such an absurdity. "Toriman, is this your great antithesis of fear? This?"

Again Toriman halted him with a gesture of the hand and a turning of the head. "I am dead serious. No proof, none at all, but this conclusion is inescapable."

"But no nation, not even the whole World, could have actually built . . . " Limpkin rolled his eyes at the mere thought of the size of such a ship.

"Why not? Someone built the Fortress and the Yards; remember, they were not crippled by the dead air of the World. Now, what I propose is that the Caroline build a duplicate; I have found quite a few fragmentary plans left, and the Yards' cellars are filled with parts. Make it the escape route, the way out of this vile prison."

"Escape to where, if I might ask?"

"That," said Toriman with a wave of his hand, "is a minor detail."

"I'm afraid, General, that I have been led into too many pits of ignorance by your convoluted manner of speaking. The idea of a starship lifting us all to a, hopefully, better world is certainly intriguing, if impossible."

"But the ship's primary purpose will not be one of simple transportation, but that of a Cause, the thing about which all the dormant hopes of our nation can crystallize.

"And here is the trick: the ship will betray the people for their own good. Here, look at this." Toriman unfolded one of the sheets he had removed from the folder. Standing up, he laid the report aside and spread the paper out on the desk. Limpkin also rose and saw on it a beautifully executed "artist's conception" of what must be Toriman's ship.

It was an overpowering thing; incredibly long and thin, it looked exactly as one might suppose a starship to look like. Its sharp, pointed nose hovered far above the flat expanse of the Yards; the body curved back, dolphin-like, to a pointed tail atop which grew a single vertical fin of unimagined height. The delta wings started about one-quarter of the way down the hull, slanting to a sharper angle as they grew, and finally ending in a straight dropoff at right angles to the ship.

"Beautiful, Toriman, just magnificent. The engineer who conceived of it had the soul of an artist," said Limpkin, half joking.

"This total plan was designed, as were most of the things for which we have no plans, by a psychologist. As a mere carrier of human freight, it would be a practical failure, but it is a lot more likely to capture the imagination of an illiterate peasant than a dun colored sphere."

"How large will, ah, would she be?"

Toriman turned to Limpkin. "She'll be about seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter, and have a maximum wingspread of three and a half miles. The tail will rise about five-eighths of a mile above the hull." Toriman sipped some wine; Limpkin collapsed into his chair, trying to decide whether to laugh or pity Toriman. "Has it captured your imagination, Limpkin?" questioned Toriman solicitously.

Limpkin could only grimace. "Are you serious about this thing? Really? Even if those of the First or some other World could build it, this World hasn't a chance."

"I agree it is beyond us now, and perhaps it shall remain so forever, but this is a minor consideration. The real point here is that the original builders left enough material to start. We've even a set of engines, or what seems to be a set, sitting below the Yards." The General lit another cigar; Limpkin saw that the gold ring on his left hand had, predictably, the horse and hand crest on its face. "Here, then, is my plan. First, we must establish a route to the Yards; once Yuma is removed through a minor war, the Tyne River will serve us splendidly. Once the way to the Yards is open, the building of the ship may commence. I estimate that a proper schedule should allow for about two hundred and fifty years." Limpkin coughed lightly. "But of course the ship will never be completed.

"You see, Limpkin, the main, indeed the only purpose of the ship will be to become a rallying point about which the will to power may awaken and be nourished. And, here comes the tricky part.

"All the plans that I have shown you for the ship are completely theoretical. Even those that I found in the Yards have translated from their rune-language into our own on a very unsure basis. For all we know the ship might collapse of its own weight, or might blow up on takeoff, or—the possibilities are endless and this is why we must never allow the ship to be finished. The effort that will flow from the resurrected spirit of the people and directed at the ship to make it their escape hatch must be covertly rechanneled back into the body of the nation proper.

"Allow me to elaborate. You, man, today go out to one of our outlying villages and issue an order: build a dam here. Why? the people ask you. For your own betterment, you answer, and for the growth and strength of mother Caroline. Yes sir, right away, sir, they answer. They will attack the stream immediately with gratifying fervor, until one of them notices the land about him. He and his father and his ancestors for a thousand years before him have worked that sterile soil, died of the plagues left in it from a hundred dark ages. Why build the dam? What good will it do? Nothing can touch this land, nothing can change the cast of the hell that he has been born into. And for mother Caroline? Was it mother Doria so many years ago? or mother Aberdeen? or . . . " Toriman shrugged. "The man is impermanent, the states transient, the efforts at improvement swallowed by the everlasting agony of the World; only the World exists and will continue to exist and to bend to it one's will appears to be beyond the power of God Himself.