To Conquer Chaos

To Conquer Chaos
was serialized in
New Worlds,
copyright 1963 by Nova Publication Ltd. It was published as a book and copyright 1964 by Ace Books, Inc. and the rights reverted to the author in 1971. The present text has been specially revised by the author for this edition.

I

The barrenland lay on the face of the world like an ulcer, nearly round, more than three hundred miles in circumference. It had been there so long that it was accepted; it was
there
and it was a
fact
and it
was.

For several days’ journey in all directions away from its edge the countryside had formerly been nearly as vacant as the barrenland itself, except that grass and trees grew, which on the barrenland they did not.

With the passage of generations, however, people had crept back, driven by population pressure, or minor shifts of climate, or migration of game, or pure cussedness, until now at least a dozen settlements big enough to be called villages existed practically on the boundary line. The price of living there was the necessity of contending with the
things
that every so often wandered out of the barrenland and killed. But they endured that. Men endure much.

The barrenland
was.
That was the extraordinary part of it. Not a simple desert, which distance and word-of-mouth transmission of news had magnified into something strange and terrible, but exactly what it was reputed to be. And it was not more than a couple of days’ march north of here.

Jervis Yanderman leaned back against the tall tree under which he had taken shelter from the light fall of rain just after sunset, and from which he had not moved even when the shower stopped, and mused over the implications of the news. Three scouts had been sent out. Two had returned already, one to the line of march and one to the camp-site directly a halt was ordered for the night, and both of them had spoken of reaching the vicinity of the barrenland and looking out over it. Their instructions were to do no more than that. Yanderman hoped the lateness of the third scout was due to nothing worse than over-enthusiasm; in any case he would be sharply reprimanded unless his reasons were very good indeed.

He ceased his musing at last, and glanced around him at the nearby terrain. It was full of dim whitish shapes and little yellow fires like fallen stars in the gloom. When Grand Duke Paul of Esberg moved his army, he did it in style as he did everything else, and with many fresh and original ideas about logistics. People had said it was impossible to move two thousand men at thirty miles a day over unknown country. Yet here they were, settled to camp for the night, canvas up, fires lit, guards posted, as smoothly as though it were a parade drill instead of a risky expedition into unexplored regions.

If he’d got over being surprised at that sort of thing, Yanderman told himself ruefully, he had no business being surprised at the actual existence of the barrenland.

A shadow moved on the slope of the hill crowned by his tree, and a voice snapped out of nowhere at him, demanding his identity. He gave it, heard rather than saw the salute the patrol returned, and—when he discovered three men moving into view where he had imagined there was only one—complimented the leader on the stealthiness of his approach. The man laughed a little self-consciously.

“Used you for practice, if you’ll excuse my saying so,” he admitted. “Spotted you from down the hill, told my men to stalk you like a shy deer. Made it, too,” he added to his companions, and they chuckled.

After a pause, the leader said, “Sir, if you don’t mind—there’s a lot of latrine rumours going around the camp since we sat down for the night. About the scouts finding what we’re looking for. Is it true?”

“True enough.”

The trio of patrolmen exchanged glances. The leader went on, “And—uh—is it what the old stories say? A place of devils and monsters, where nothing honest-to-daylight can live?”

“Devils I know nothing of,” Yanderman answered easily. “I fear more the solid things that go by day than the wispy things that go by night. And as to monsters—why, strange beasts there may well be, but we’ve met savage animals before, and two thousand men’s a force to reckon with.”

One of the other men spoke up, clearing his throat, first, “Sir, if you’ll excuse me—would you settle me a bet, if it’s not presuming?”

Yanderman lifted an eyebrow towards him, but in the dusk it probably went unnoticed. The man continued, “A mate of mine says he’s going to get a charm from Granny Jassy—says the Duke has one he bought of her, which is the ground for his successes. I say no, it’s all dreamy talk, and Granny’s charms are so much stable-dirt, and bet him a day’s pay he was wrong about the Duke.”

The third patrolman, the one who had not spoken, shifted his feet uncomfortably. Yanderman had a shrewd suspicion that he must be the mate in question, and the man who had put the question wanted the bet settled quickly with no room for argument afterwards.

He said, “You have a clear head, soldier. Tell your mate—as I’m prepared to tell him myself if he claims otherwise—that Grand Duke Paul owes his successes to his clever thinking and his thorough planning. He probably wouldn’t know a charm if he saw one. And as for Granny Jassy, maybe she peddles charms on the side, and maybe she makes a little money from gullible soldiers who think she’ll give them luck. But were she to offer one to the Duke, he’d laugh till he cried.”

He was right about the identity of the other party in the bet. The third patrolman said hotly, “But what did the Duke clutter his train with her for, if not for the luck she can charm on him?”

“You speak over-fiercely, soldier,” Yanderman told him in a mild tone. “Let it pass. The Duke brings Granny with him for the sake of what she can tell about the way we travel; by some power which she herself doesn’t understand, she knows before we see what ground we’ll come to, what hazards to expect. That frightens her as well as puffing her up.”

“Can she see past the edge of the barrenland too?” the third soldier muttered. Plainly he was the one who was readiest to speak of devils and monsters. Patiently Yanderman amplified his explanation.

“It’s less a matter of seeing than of remembering. In the old days people saw this land, and Granny tells what they saw. But things change. And possibly no man has lived within the barrenland and survived to tell the tale.”

It was a mistake to have put it that way. The three men shifted their feet and looked at each other. Yanderman hurried to counteract the effect he’d had on them.

“Soldier!” he said to the third man. “How do you like your gun?”

Startled, the man hefted the weapon in his hands. “I like it well,” he said. “Fires true, kills clean, as a gun should.”

“Then thank Granny Jassy for it, as well as the Duke. It was from a memory she had that the design was drawn. And a man with a gun may venture into the barrenland and face monstrous things with determination—if he has any!”

“Are we going into the barrenland, then?” the patrol leader demanded.

“As yet, no one knows. The decision is the Duke’s—and if he says to go there, I’ll go with him rather than with any other commander who ever trod ground.” Yanderman spoke with finality; the patrol leader caught the tone, called his men to salute, and led them off into the night again.

Yanderman started to make his way down from the hilltop, frowning. It was only to be expected that when they came so close to the legendary barrenland all the old wives’ tales would revive. The difficulty was, of course, that up till now the tales of one old wife in particular—Granny Jassy—had proved to be borne out by facts, and this made it hard to laugh off the alarming notions the men had of devils and monsters.

For himself, the main reaction he got was a quickening of the pulse and a brightening of the eye at the thought of the wonders he was going to see. He’d caught that spirit of wanting to go and see for himself from the Duke, who had much of it. Yanderman wished he could also catch the cool skill in planning for new situations which went with it in the Duke’s case. Still, that was a rare gift in any generation, and the Duke had enough for any ten leaders.

There was a sudden commotion across the camp from where he stood. He looked up, seeing a searchlight on another hilltop spring to full brilliance, cutting the night like a sword. That was another of the things that Duke Paul had sorted from the legends and quasi-memories of people like Granny Jassy—those searchlights were cumbersome, but they were wonderfully useful. As soon as camp was pitched the men tending the lights chose vantage points, filled their ovens with wood, lit their little fires underneath to bake the gases out of the wood, and sat down to wait. When the order came, they had only to turn a little tap, light the gas, and drop an incandescent mantle over the flame. A parabolic reflector of polished silver on a copper base then hurled the beam where it was wanted.

This time they were lighting up a pass between two low hills north of the camp, and dimly in the distance a figure on horseback could be discerned, waving wildly.

At once Yanderman broke into a run. That must be the missing scout. He’d be taken straight to the Duke to give an account of his experience, and when he reported Yanderman wanted to be present.

II

Yanderman stood aside for a moment to let someone else come out of the tent, ducking under the flap that served as a door, and then went inside himself. This was really more of a pavilion than a tent, with flooring of woven rushes put down on the grass, and several pieces of portable furniture spread around. The light came from a wood-gas lamp and made the shadows of the occupants move, big and black, on the hanging walls.

The guard just inside the door saluted. Yanderman acknowledged the gesture, crossed the floor to a spot in front of the Duke’s table, and saluted in his turn.

Grand Duke Paul of Esberg raised his dark eyes from the hand-painted maps on the table before him. He was a massively magnificent man. He had one of the largest heads anyone could recall seeing, thatched above and below with dense black hair and full black beard. His pillar-like neck set into broad shoulders and a barrel chest clad with a shirt of red and black—the Esberg colours—and his legs were thrust into long tan boots. Were he to stand up, he would overtop Yanderman, who was not small, by head and shoulders.

“They just sent to tell me the missing scout is in sight,” he said. “Did you see him?”

“Riding like a madman through the notch in the hills to the north,” Yanderman confirmed. “That’s why I came down.”

“Take a seat. I look forward to learning what’s delayed him so long.” Duke Paul leaned back in his chair, and it creaked slightly under his huge bulk. “I’ve sent also for Granny Jassy, in case she has clues to any puzzles the scout may report.”

Yanderman took a folding chair from a stack in the corner of the tent, and sat down. Beside the Duke his secretary—an ascetic-faced young man called Kesford—pinned a fresh sheet of yellow paper to his writing-board and sharpened the point of his pencil by scraping it half a dozen times on a block of pumice.

It was only a few minutes before Granny Jassy was heard outside, her voice raised shrilly in protest against the way she had been disturbed after the long day’s journey. Chuckling, a soldier told her not to be so sensitive, and the flap-door was thrown back.

A gaunt figure in a shapeless black dress, Granny Jassy walked smartly through the opening. She came to the table in front of the Duke, planted both hands on it palms down, and leaned forward.

“Duke or no Duke!” she said, and pulled her sunken-cheeked face into an alarming scowl. “Duke or no Duke, nobody ought to shove an old weak woman around like this! Any more treatment so disrespectful to my aged bones, and I’ll go home—I will that, though I have to learn to steal horses to do it!”

Duke Paul raised one tufted black eyebrow and said nothing, but waved at the couch on his right where he slept at night. It was soft and had several plump pillows on it. Granny Jassy, still mumbling her opinions about the way she was handled, turned to sit cautiously down on the fattest pillow.

Another few moments, and they brought the scout into the tent. Duke Paul started up with an oath, staring. All the man’s shirt was stiff with blood; his face was pale, though his eyes were bright, and he was leaning for support on a medical auxiliary in green gown and tight black turban. He attempted to salute, but his right arm was disobedient and he had to let it fall back to his side, wincing.

Yanderman stood up. “Move over, Granny,” he said softly. “You may be old, but he’s injured. We’ll give you a chair and lay him on that couch.”

“Up! Down! Move here! Move there!” Granny squawked. “I wish I’d never been taken from my own hearth, that I do.”

But she groaned to her feet and took a chair instead, and the medical auxiliary unrolled a red blanket from the pack on his shoulder to toss over the couch and protect it from the scout’s blood. Clearly the Duke was impatient to hear the man’s news, but he asked no questions till the blood-soaked shirt had been cut away, exposing a gash a hand’s-breadth long and very deep in his shoulder muscles. A girl came into the tent with a big pail of clean water and a package of dressings, and the scout, his eyes blank with exhaustion, endured while the wound was washed, closed with three stitches, and covered.

“Yan!” the Duke said sharply. “In that chest there’s a silver flask. Give him a gill of the liquor from it.”

Yanderman glanced around. The chest the Duke pointed to was behind his table on the ground, the lid lowered but not locked. He found the silver flask and poured a little from it into the cup-shaped lid.

The strong-smelling spirit seemed to revive the injured man instantly. With a sigh of relief the Duke picked up his chair and carried it closer to the couch.

“Well, Ampier?” he said. “What hit you?”

Yanderman stood silent in the background, listening. He felt he would never cease to wonder at the Duke’s ability to name every man in his army on sight. The medical auxiliary went on with his work unobtrusively, checking the scout’s pulse, folding a sling for his arm, laying another blanket over him for warmth. The girl who had brought the pail of water had slipped away again; she returned some minutes later with a mug of steaming broth and a handful of grapes.

Ampier, propped up on the Duke’s pillows, shook his head. “What name to put to it, sir, is beyond me. It was the strangest thing I ever set eyes on. According to instructions I rode due north by compass, as well as I could, and not long past noon I came in sight of the barrenland. That’s a wonderful thing to behold! On this side, as you may picture it, the grass grows thickish, the rocks boast coats of lichen, there are trees and all manner of plants. In the space of a few yards all is changed. The grass withers, vanishes away, a plantain here and there dots the ground, the stones crop out, dust replaces fertile earth, and from there till the skyline—nothing! I rode along its edge for perhaps a mile, not wishing to exceed my orders by trespassing on the barrenland itself, and—to be candid—much alarmed to find it real and no mere legend.

“Blurry in the east of where I found myself was a stain of smoke upon the sky. Reasoning that man’s the creature who makes fire, I fancied I’d do well to go further and find if a village was there. It would have water, which we’ll need, and perhaps food to sell us. So I spurred for the smoke. But before I was in sight of any habitation, the
thing
came out from behind a rock and was upon me like a lightning bolt.”

“How was it made?” the Duke demanded. Yanderman leaned forward, because Ampier’s voice was weakening. He saw that there was sweat glistening on the face of the secretary Kesford as he noted down what was said.

“Large—of a boar-pig’s weight, I’d say. But possessed of a long weaving neck, and on the tip of that a thing less like a bird’s hooked bill than like a single great claw with a slash for a mouth beneath it. In colour it was sandy, or tawny, except for this hooked claw-thing, which was white. It could plant its feet on the ground and slash at me upon my horse by using the stretch of this serpent-like neck. I loosed a shot at it, but the slug went wide, and then I strove to cut its neck through with my sword. So swift and flexible was it, though, that I could not, until it sank the claw-beak in me. Then I was able to slash it, and it ran about blindly until it died. The pain was so great I dared not dismount and cut off part of it as witness to my story, but turned and rode fast for the line of march again. My horse foundered under me as I came through the picket-lines; the
thing
gashed him on the withers, and no man will ride him again.”

Duke Paul ran his fingers through his beard and nodded over the story. Ampier let his head sink back, closing his eyes again. Yanderman glanced around the tent, and noticed that the medical auxiliary had taken up the blood-soaked shirt he had cut from the scout’s body and was turning it over curiously in the light of the lamp.

Yanderman moved closer to him. “What is it you see?” he inquired in low tones.

“That, sir.” The medical auxiliary nodded downwards, holding the cloth stretched in the full beam of the lamp. Yanderman stared.

On the crusting brown blood there was a fine blur of green—like a mould, or mildew. It was alive, for it could be seen to grow, not creeping evenly out over the cloth but seeming to seed itself half an inch or an inch distant from the main part, then to spread at a snail’s pace till the new patch rejoined the original one, then to pause, then to begin again.

“Show the Duke,” Yanderman ordered, and the medical auxiliary did so.

Duke Paul watched the phenomenon curiously for a while. At last he said, “Take that cloth—in a box, or sealed package—to your medical tent. Test all the strong liquids and powders on it till you find one which will check or stop its growth. And watch that the living blood from Ampier’s wound is not infected with it!”

The medical auxiliary saluted and obeyed, vanishing into the night outside. The girl who had come back with the broth fed some of it to the injured scout; then with the help of the guard from the doorway she guided him from the tent and away to his quarters.

Duke Paul directed Kesford to read back what Ampier had told them, to fix it firmly in his mind. Then he turned to Granny Jassy, scowling at the side of the tent.

“Come to the couch, Granny,” he said. “Let’s find out if your strangely stocked mind holds any explanation for this
thing
which attacked Ampier.”

Grumbling, Granny obeyed. The Duke drew from his pouch a length of silver chain with a crystal ball on the end, as large as a man’s thumbnail, and set it swinging before Granny’s face. Shortly her eyes closed and he was able to begin questioning her. He persisted for an hour—his patience, Yanderman sometimes thought, was inhuman—without extracting any useful information.

The trouble with people like Granny Jassy, Yanderman reflected, was that they didn’t understand the memories which they could call up. Here now, for example, Granny was telling of strange animals, of many colours and in vast numbers, on which people rode as though they served for horses. Yet when pressed more closely, she described them as being wheeled—not animals, then, but machines! However, they went by themselves; for ignorant Granny, that made them animals, for whoever heard of a machine going by itself?

His mind wandered. How was it possible—the invariable question—how was it possible for these tales told by Granny and with less colour and detail by several other people in Esberg to be true memories? Yet it seemed they must be. When Duke Paul decided to base experiments on some of these fantastic tales even Yanderman, whose admiration for the duke was boundless, wondered whether he was wasting his time. He was not; many useful instruments, such as the searchlights guarding the campsite, and even the guns which armed the troops, were derived from old wives’ tales. You might say, of course, that this was a subconscious fitting-together of available facts which any inventor of new devices applied more systematically. You might. The Duke didn’t.

Encouraged, Duke Paul selected another kind of tale for investigation—the tale of a great city three days’ journey north of Esberg, with a million people in it. A ludicrous fantasy!

Yet three days’ journey north the men he sent out came upon mounds and hillocks clothed with greenery, gnawed by time, and dug into them. And there they found, true enough, pieces of worked metal, shards of strong glass, corroded household utensils, and more objects than anyone could have imagined.

And indeed now the proofs were beyond arguing. For ever since they set out on this greatest expedition of all, to see whether the legendary barrenland was real, Granny Jassy had been able to tell them of the terrain ahead—not as it was today, but as it might have been in the weird but consistent world of the old tales, when men lived in the gigantic cities of which the ruins had been discovered, when they flew through the air and even … no, that
was
imagination, surely! To fly in the air was vaguely conceivable; birds and insects did it. But to fly beyond the air, to other worlds, was ridiculous. And even that absurdity paled beside the ultimate: the story of
walking
to other worlds than this.

“You look solemn, Yan!” Duke Paul boomed, and Yanderman came back from his musing with a start. Granny Jassy was getting off the couch. The crystal ball on its length of chain had vanished into the Duke’s pouch again. Kesford was going over his notes, correcting his writing so he could read it back tomorrow.

“I am,” Yanderman agreed. “I grow confused with the mixture of certainty and fancy which confronts us—as though somehow a little nightmare had leaked into the waking world.”

“Assuredly a beast such as attacked Ampier smacks of some playful god’s whimsy,” the Duke said. He rubbed his hands together. “Nonetheless he killed it, and lives—or will, providing that green horror on his shirt doesn’t take root in his blood. I confess I held the tales of monsters from the barrenland too lightly, or I’d not have sent out scouts singly. Tomorrow we’ll do otherwise. We’ll send a party of a dozen, fully-armed.”

Yanderman nodded. “I do take it as heartening,” he said, “that men manage to live almost on the edge of the barrenland.”

Duke Paul chuckled. “You noted that! Good, good! Yes, we must gain all the information we can from those best fitted to tell us. Get the exactest details of Ampier’s route, and make straight for this smudge of smoke he fancied he saw. If it proves to be other than a village, go beyond it till you find people.”

Well, that was how one usually received orders from Duke Paul. Yanderman shrugged. “I’ll do so,” he agreed. “I’ll leave directly after dawn.”

He paused, expecting something further. But as far as Duke Paul was concerned the matter was settled. Already he had gone back to his maps, and his head was bowed as though tilted forward by the weight of his enormous beard.