Bob Shaw - The Fugitive Worlds

What am I doing to myself? he thought suddenly. What kind of man am I becoming? Would that other Toller Maraquine have mooned around in such a manner — lovesick and homesick — like a sallow-faced adolescent?

The questions propelled Toller to his feet and he was pacing in impatient circles, a hand on the hilt of his sword, when he saw Correvalte approaching with the rest of the crew in his wake. The lieutenant was checking his notes as he walked, looking businesslike, competent and very much at ease with himself and his surroundings. Toller felt a twinge of envy coupled with a momentary suspicion that Correvalte had the potential to be the better officer of the two.

“The report is almost complete, sir—except for an inspection of the pumping station,” Correvalte said. “Have you been inside the building?”

“How could I enter the building when the accursed door is barred?” Toller snapped. “Do I look like a wraith which can insinuate itself through cracks in the woodwork?”

The lieutenant’s eyes widened and then became opaquely impersonal. “I’m sorry, sir—I didn’t realize…”

“I have sent Gabbleronn for some tools,” Toller cut in, already ashamed of his display of peevishness. “See if he needs any help in carrying them—I have no wish to linger in this cemetery any longer than necessary.”

He turned away as Correvalte was performing one of his ultra-correct salutes and walked along the bank of the river until he came to a narrow wooden bridge. From a distance the bridge had appeared quite sound, but on close examination he saw that its structure had a grey-white spongy texture which signaled that it had been ravaged by wood-boring insects. He drew his sword and struck at one of the handrail stanchions. It severed with very little resistance to the blade and toppled into the river, taking a section of the rail with it. Half a dozen further blows were sufficient to cut through the two main beams of the bridge, sending the whole rotten edifice plunging down into the water amid puffs of powdered wood and a buzzing of minute winged creatures which had been disturbed in their appointed task.

“You have had a good meal,” Toller said, whimsically addressing the multitudes of insects and their grubs which must have been still inside the fallen timbers, “now you can enjoy a drink.”

The little flurry of physical activity, frivolous though it had been, helped ease the tensions in his mind and he was in a better mood as he retraced his steps to the village. He reached the pumping station just as Gabbleronn and two of his helpers had succeeded in prising the door open with the aid of large crowbars.

“Good work,” Toller said. “Now let us see what marvels of engineering lie within.”

Before arriving on Land he had known from his history tuition that the planet had no metals, and that brakka wood had always been employed for applications where, on Overland, the designer would have chosen iron, steel or some other suitable metal. Nevertheless, machinery whose gearwheels and other highly stressed components were carved from the black wood seemed cumbersome and quaint to his eye, relics of a primitive era.

He led the way along a short passage to a large, vaulted chamber which contained massive pumping machinery. The windows in the roof were heavily encrusted with grime, but there was enough light filtering down from them to show that the machinery, although coated with dust, was complete and in a good state of repair. Those parts not made of brakka—beams and struts—were of the same close-grained wood as the station’s door, a material which evidently resisted wood-boring insects or was not to their taste. Toller tested one of the beams with his thumbnail and was impressed by its hardness, even after fifty years without maintenance.

“I believe it’s called rafter wood, sir,” Steenameert said, coming to his side. “You can see why it was favored by builders.”

“How do you know what it’s called?”

Steenameert blushed. “I have read descriptions of it many times in the—”

“Oh, no!” The voice was that of Lieutenant Correvalte, who had been walking around the perimeter of the chamber, opening the doors into side rooms as he came to them. He was backing off from a doorway, shaking his head, and Toller knew at once that he had witnessed a great obscenity. This, Toller told himself, is what I have been expecting since we entered the village. I knew something bad was in store for us, and I have no wish to set eyes on it.

He knew, also, that he could not avoid personally inspecting the find lest the word get about among the crewmen that he had become soft. The most he could do was to delay the grim moment. He stooped over a control lever and ratchet and brushed the dust away from them, pretending to take a special interest in the precise carving, and while doing so watched his men. Their curiosity aroused by Correvalte’s reaction, they were taking turns at venturing into the room. None stayed longer than a few seconds, and—professionally callous though they were—each looked subdued and thoughtful as he returned to the main chamber.

I have an appointment in that room, Toller thought, and it would be unseemly to delay any longer.

He straightened up, hand unconsciously falling to the hilt of his sword, and walked to the waiting doorway. The room beyond resembled a prison cell. It was devoid of furniture, and was cheerlessly illuminated by a broken skylight in the sloping roof far above. Ranged around the walls, in the seated position, were perhaps twenty skeletons. The wispy remnants of dresses and skirts, plus the presence of necklaces and ceramic bangles, informed Toller that the skeletons were the remains of women.

It isn’t all that bad, he thought. It was a fact of life, a fact of death, that the plague was impartial. It struck down women just as readily as men, and since arriving on this unhappy world I have seen many, many…

His mind seized up, chilled, as he absorbed a fact which had not been readily apparent at first glance. Curled up in the pelvic basin of each of the skeletons was another skeleton—a tiny armature of fragile bones which was all that remained of a baby whose life had ended before it had properly begun.

Yes, the plague had been very impartial.

Toller longed to turn and flee from the room, but the deadly coldness in his mind had percolated down through his body, immobilizing his limbs. Time had become distorted, stretching seconds into eons, and he knew that he was destined to spend the rest of his life frozen to the same spot, on that threshold of pessimism and pure despair.

“The villagers must have put all their pregnant women in here, hoping these walls would protect them,” Lieutenant Correvalte said from close behind Toller. “Look! One of them was having twins.”

Toller chose not to seek out that refinement of horror.

Breaking free of his paralysis, he turned and walked away from the room, acutely aware of being closely scrutinized by every member of his crew.

“Make a note,” he said over his shoulder to Correvalte. “Say that we inspected the pumping machinery and found it to be in good condition and capable of being restored to working order in a short time.”

“Is that all, sir?”

“I haven’t noticed anything else that our sovereign would regard as important,” Toller said in casual tones, walking slowly towards the station’s entrance, disguising the anxiousness he felt, the pressing need to reassure himself that the sanity of sunshine could still be found in the outside world.

The Migration Day celebrations had taken Toller completely by surprise.

He had completed his survey mission and arrived back at the base camp in Ro-Atabri less than an hour before nightfall, having lost track of the date. Unusually for him, he felt deeply tired. The news that it was Day 226, the anniversary of the first touch-downs on Overland, had failed to strike any spark within him, and he had gone straight to bed after signing his ship over to Fleet Master Codell. Even the word that Vantara had returned to base earlier in the day had not roused him from the pervasive lethargy, the weariness of spirit which was taking the light out of everything.