The Creatures of Man (34 page)

It was particularly interested in Mead's theories about itself, and Cargy described these in considerable detail. Soul-stuff, Mead had thought, drifted like an insubstantial fog from Merga's motile plants, and was doubtless absorbed in great quantities by the grass-munching herd animals of the psychivores. After an animal had been "milked" its nature was such that it soon recaptured its normal supply.

Barkis agreed that Mead's theories fitted with what the psychivores knew of themselves and their animals. In the shed, where comatose herd animals were sheltered until they recovered from a "milking", Cargy watched Barkis take nourishment. Then they wandered back outside.

"Something I don't understand," complained the boy. "Your folks talk mostly by exchanging bits of soul, you say, and when you do, one of you learns everything the other knows that he didn't already know. What's already known to both sort of cancels out in the exchange. You were used to getting knowledge the way you got it from Mead, so what bothered you about that was getting too much strange knowledge at once, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Okay. What I want to know is, why do you think the other psychivores would go crazy if you communicated with them? You didn't go crazy, or at least not for long."

"But I
did
, and I'm still thoroughly insane," Barkis replied.

"You don't seem like it to me," Cargy said uneasily.

"But I am. My willingness to grow arms, and to construct artifacts, would be obvious evidence of insanity to my kind. And they would know, as I did not at the time, that the insanity is permanent. At the beginning I was sustained only by the hope that the aberrative effects would gradually fade away. One of my kind, communicating with me now, would receive at once the shock of a new-data overload plus the realization that the aberrative effects of it were permanent. It would be too much to take at one time."

Cargy nodded slowly. "But somebody," he said, "will have to communicate with them."

"Yes," agreed Barkis, "in the long run contact with humanity is unavoidable. But I am obviously unfit for the task."

"Me neither," said Cargy. "That ain't my line."

"Actually, it is the task of your Xenologists. I'm afraid you must inform them of us, Cargy."

"I told you why I can't do that," the boy growled.

After a silence, Barkis suggested, "Could you not inform them by writing?"

"They wouldn't believe a letter from me, no more than they'd believe me in person."

"But," said Barkis, "they would believe one from Mead. And only you know Mead is dead."

Cargy blinked. Then he grinned.

"Hey, that'll work!" he exclaimed. "My writing looks pretty much like his did, and I can leave it where his supply man will find it. Hey, I better start to Dappliner Valley right now, to get to work on it!"

Barkis approved, and slithered along with the boy to the autopod.

"When the Xenologists show up, don't tell them anything about me, Barkis," the boy urged in parting.

"I will keep your secret, but I hope you will return soon."

"I will, in a few years when I grow up. I have to watch my step till then."

And also, Cargy mused as he took the pod into the air, he was going to be too busy for much visiting for a while. He had to get that letter chore done, and then back to business, which he had been neglecting for a whole week already. And now that he had the pod for transportation in the wilds, he was going to be in a position to expand like mad!

Why, he could even take on a couple of Port City's snooty gourmet restaurants as steady customers! They ought to be glad to pay plenty to offer fresh wildfruit on their menus—probably priced at five times what they paid him for it!

Some guys, he mused with annoyance, will do most anything to make a buck.

The inn was cool, and the wine in the cup of Basdon the Bloodshot was potent and sweet. He drank and smiled—politely though grimly—at the joking exchanges of the graingrowers sitting with him. They, after all, were paying for his wine.

"And anything else you want, good swordsman!" the largest of the farmers bellowed, slapping him on the back. "You served us well today, and by all that's devious we'll see you served no worse tonight! Ho there, Keep!"

The thick-middled man in the apron turned. "What, Jarno?"

"Me and the lads will get along to our own diggings after a cup or three," the farmer Jarno told him. "But our good friend the swordsman Basdon stays tonight. You tend him well, and we'll pay."

The aproned man nodded and looked curiously at Basdon. "Fair enough," he agreed, waddling closer with his gaze still on Basdon. "Might I ask, stranger, how got you in the good graces of Jarno and his bucolic cronies?"

"He found five graves we would have missed!" bellowed Jarno.

The aproned man frowned. "Out in the Narrowneck ground?" he asked.

"That's right. Them god-warriors got tricky, I guess," one of the other graingrowers chimed in. "They must have chopped the holes through the roots of a young chestnut tree. In five years, the roots grew back, to cover the bodies in the ground beneath. We couldn't snout them at all."

"But Basdon could!" said Jarno, giving the swordsman another slap on the back. "What's more than that, he got off his horse and helped us dig them out and burn them. You'd think a swordsman would be too snooty to dirty his hands with hard work. But not Basdon!"

His eyes still studying Basdon, the aproned man asked Jarno, "Could you recognize any of the bodies?"

"No. All five were grown men, and there was nothing to identify them. Basdon figures they could be god-warriors."

"Oh? My name is Jonker, swordsman. For a fighting man, you must be a bit of a magician to snout those bodies underneath living roots."

Basdon sipped from his cup. "A bit," he said, looking at his wine.

"And you think they were god-warriors?"

Basdon shrugged. "No magic in that guess. The god-warriors bury all the dead, because that's in keeping with their beliefs. But they would be most concerned for their own, so they would be most likely to bury them where they would
stay
buried." He saw the innkeeper Jonker was frowning uncertainly, so he added, "I know it's hard to follow the way they think, but to them a buried body is not an invitation to the first necromancer who comes along to enslave the body's soul. To them, burial is safe, and the worst thing that could happen to a body of a fallen comrade would be unearthing it. That would disturb the sleep of the soul."

Jonker nodded slowly. "Right you are, swordsman, now that I think it through."

"This talk of god-business gives me the shivers," one of the men complained uneasily. "It's bad enough to spend a day a week out there undoing the filthy work of those accursed worshippers. We do it, because it's our duty. But we don't have to gab about it all evening!"

Jonker chuckled, then said, "It's not very appetizing pre-supper conversation, I agree. How's the wine, swordsman?"

"Very tasty, and with bite," Basdon replied. "I haven't tasted better anywhere in Nenkunal." Jonker looked pleased. "I spelled it myself. And as the results demonstrate, I'm not without magical ability."

A couple of the graingrowers snorted and one said jokingly, "A top-grade magi, that's our Jonker, all right."

Basdon gathered that Jonker's pretensions in The Art were something of a standing joke. Which was a comforting thought, even though Basdon's personal secrets were protected by spells. Jonker's penetrating look had made the swordsman uneasy.

Attention turned to a bit of byplay between Jarno and the serving girl, who was trying to sit on the big man's lap.

"Go perch your pretty bottom elsewhere, Suni!" he growled unhappily. "A man's got his limits!"

"Ho, Jarno's getting old!" jibed one of the farmers.

"No, just sensible," Jarno denied angrily. "My wife's niece is staying with me while my wife's birthing, and she's an ardent and demanding piece. She would knot my head if I came home with no desire for her!" He gave the girl a shove. "Go perch on the swordsman, wench! He's a handsome stag, and with ardor to spare!"

Suni turned to study Basdon. "So he is," she giggled.

Basdon had paid her little heed before, but as she came toward him he looked her over. She was a shapely lass with a face of carefree prettiness rather than beauty. He put down his wine and opened his arms to her as she sat down on his lap.

She stroked his stubbled cheek, then kissed him on the mouth with the full lack of restraint of a healthy-minded woman. His thought of Belissa was only a brief, hurting flick across his brain, quickly crowded out by the lush wench in his arms, though his eyes burned sorely.

"Ho, the swordsman will content you!" guffawed Jarno approvingly. "He'll content her only for as long as it takes," observed another. "Suni's no babe to be soothed through the night by a milkless pacifier."

The girl worked her skirt out from under her, and Basdon's exploring hands found much to approve in her structural details. Suddenly he lifted her onto the table, as the farmers hastily rescued their cups and the flagon, and climbed up with her.

She made a lively match of it, constantly wriggling and straining against him while she moaned and giggled into his mouth. Basdon was through all too quickly for her pleasure. But as he stood up and adjusted his clothes one of the younger graingrowers moved quickly to take his place with the girl. The others shouted their approval and three of them began casting lots for the next turn.

Basdon sat down and recovered his cup from the floor and refilled it. Belissa was strong in his mind now, depressing him bitterly. She had been so different from this lusty lass Suni . . . so damnably different.

Jarno touched him on the shoulder. "Watching this discomfits me," he said, flicking a thumb toward the pair on the table. "I must depart for home in haste. But remember you have a friend in this valley, swordsman, if you pass this way again."

"That I will, Jarno," said Basdon. They touched each other's foreheads, and the big graingrower hurried out the door.

Moodily he watched the sporting on the table while he nursed his wine. Presently Jonker told him supper was prepared, and guided him to a table in a quieter corner of the room. The graingrowers soon departed, shouting goodbyes to him and promises of future visits to Suni. The girl also found reason to leave the room.

In the quiet, Jonker came to have wine with his guest.

"Not often in these unsettled times does a man of arms find comradeship among tillers of the soil," he remarked. "I'm pleased to see it happen. It reminds me of calmer days."

"Perhaps those days are returning," said Basdon.

Jonker shook his head. "All that is finished. The god-warriors will return, more numerous, time and again, until finally they will come to stay. Here and everywhere. They are the wave of the future."

"I think not," Basdon countered. "The god-warriors are . . . are afflicted with a soreness of the mind. Some will die of this affliction, and others will heal. That is the way with sicknesses, is it not?"

"With most sicknesses, yes. Not this one." Jonker gulped his wine while staring at Basdon. "Swordsman, you cannot judge the full course of this affliction upon the world by the course it has taken in you. And you must see that, while you seem to be a special case, your recovery is not complete."

Basdon tensed, prepared to come to his feet with sword in hand. But the innkeeper made no move other than to lift his cup. Although he had so much as said he recognized Basdon as a god-warrior . . .

Jonker said softly, "The age of the magical arts draws to a close, swordsman. This earth now faces an age of superstition, of
religion,
as the leaders of the god-warriors are beginning to call it. This will endure nigh twenty thousand years before The Art begins its slow recovery."

"You speak as one who knows," Basdon commented tightly.

"I was not always an innkeeper, swordsman. Nor were countrymen always encouraged to regard my abilities as a matter for laughter. Yes, I speak as one who knows."

"Then why don't you
use
your knowledge?" Basdon demanded. "If you have The Art, employ it against the . . . the enemy."

Jonker shrugged. "That would be futile. We must be overwhelmed. The earth is not the only world, swordsman. It is one among many. The starry sky is filled with worlds, and the powers of magic span the gulfs between. Only of late those powers have turned to darkness—to necromancy on a scale that makes our own black-spellers seem prankish children by comparison. That is the power behind the god-warriors, swordsman, the power of universal necromancy! We are all but helpless in the face of such strength."

Basdon was shaping a question when the innkeeper signaled him to silence, and Basdon saw that Suni was re-entering the room. "I will go see to your bed, swordsman," said Jonker, rising. He went out, and after a moment Suni came over and took the chair he had vacated. She regarded the swordsman with large blue eyes that were still interested, but now a trifle sleepy.

"You are a hasty man, Basdon," she murmured. "If you are equally swift with your sword, your enemies must die with merciful suddenness."

"My apologies," he replied. "I have traveled far and seldom meet such hospitality as you offered, so I fear I was inconsiderate . . ."

"You can make amends," she giggled. "I was wondering: Is it the dust of the roads that reddens your eyes?"

"Perhaps so," he replied, blinking rapidly now that his attention had been called to the ever-present but slight burning in his eyes.

"Basdon . . . Basdon the Bloodshot!" she laughed.

He flinched. Why did everyone hit upon that naming for him, even on the briefest acquaintance? It was irritating.

"It's but a trivial imperfection," the girl said hastily, seeing his annoyance, "and the only one I noticed . . . other than your haste, of course."

He smiled. "The haste, if not the redness of eye, can be considered cured."