E.C. Tubb - The Winds of Gath

He looked thoughtfully at a boy, scarcely a man, the one who had traveled with Sime and the crone. He was quite dead.

Drowned, perhaps, caught in the storm and not knowing what to do in order to survive. He lay face-up, his face very pale beneath the patina of rain, his thin hands crossed on his stomach, his lips parted, his hair a dark smear on his forehead. Dumarest reached out and turned his head, waiting for a flash of lightning before turning it to the other side.

The sky crackled with a livid glare and he saw, quite clearly, the little red spot high on the cheek, just before the ear and below the temple.

A spot which could have been made by the thrust of a heavy needle.

The rain ceased and the thunder muttered into silence. The lightning blazed on the horizon in a lambent chiaroscuro. Far to the west the libration of the planet thrust a wall of cold air into the tropic heat of the sun. The thermodynamic balance began to change. Equally far to the east a cold bank of frigid air began to move, drawn by the vacuum of expansion. It speeded as it moved, rushing over the cold of the nightside toward the warmth of the sun. It swept across plains of ice and hummocks of frost and streamed down on the mountains. It hit and surrounded the obstruction, blowing up and over, forcing its way through cracks and crevasses, bathing the fretted and filigreed mass of stone and crystal with the thrust of its passage.

The air became murmurous with sound.

Ghost sound. The distant skirl of pipes, the crying wail of strings,the heartbeat of rattling drums, all mingled and faint, thin and unimpressive.

The wind blew stronger.

And the dead rose to talk again.

Dumarest rose from where he knelt beside the body.

Around him streamed a medley of voices, a cacophony of sound, a vibration which covered the audible range and extended far beyond. He heard his name and turned and saw nothing. He caught the echo of a laugh, the snarl of a curse, the thin tremolo of a baby's wail. He closed his eyes.

Immediately the sounds grew louder. A multi-toned murmur whispered past his ears and, buried within it, a voice scratched with boneless fingers at the doors of memory.

"It's your turn next, Earl, Make it doubles—I want to celebrate."

"Carson!"

"Don't be a fool, Earl. Why don't you settle down now that you've got the chance? Take my advice and do it before it's too late."

"Carson!" Dumarest opened his eyes, almost expecting to see the familiar shape of the man who had traveled with him to a dozen worlds. Carson who had gambled against the odds once too often and was now five years dead.

There was nothing, only the mountains, the wind, the thin wavering of the unmistakable voice. That and the cries of the others, the travelers and tourists, who had left their shelter to stand, entranced, exposed to the magic of the winds of Gath.

Again he closed his eyes—the illusion was better that way, more complete. Now the voices were clear and strong, ringing from the winds which blew about his head. Many voices, some of men who had tried to kill him, others of men he had killed. Moidor sneered his challenge, Benson murmured his envy; he heard the spiteful whine of a phygria, the hot snarl of a laser. The past unfolded and the dead became real:

The old captain who had taken pity on a scared and frightened boy.

"One thing, son. You must promise never to tell anyone of this. Never mention it or go into detail. If you do it will cost my life. Do you understand?"

The promise he had kept until now and then only broken in part. But a man should know how to find his home.

Other voices, harsh, impatient, some appealing. A dizzying blend of sound containing within itself all the voices he had ever known. And one voice, warm with sensuous passion, whispering with rising emotion, tearing at his heart with painful memory: " Darling… darling… darling. . . ."

"No!"

He jerked open his eyes. The past was dead, she was dead, let it lie. But the temptation was strong. To hear her again, to thrill to her words of love, to recapture the joy of the past and warm his spirit in tender memory…

Savagely he shook his head. The voice was a lure, an illusion without flesh or real meaning, a ghost from the past born in his own head from memories impossible to eradicate. Now he could understand Megan's warning. How many had run to their death thinking that they ran to the arms of their lovers, family, friends?

Or ran from some imagined danger which tore at their sanity?

He gritted his teeth against the rising wind. Around him the plain was in turmoil. Men sat entranced, beating time to invisible orchestras, walking as if in a dream, standing with tears running down their faces or cursing or holding conversations with the empty air. They stood revealed in the flicker of the distant lightning, helpless in the grip of their illusions.

The wind blew stronger.

High on the mountain a young man checked his instruments and felt the rising force of the wind. He heard nothing, the muffs clamped to his ears deadening all sound, but he was curious. The instruments required little attention and it was doubtful if he would ever again visit Gath. And, if he should listen, just for a short while, who would ever know?

He lifted his muffs and listened and screamed and fell two hundred feet to his death.

On the plain the Prince of Emmened blanched as voices rang in his head, sharp, accusing, the words of men long dead, the sobs of women long forgotten. He cried out and his physician came running, an old man, long deaf, the electrodes of his mechanical ears glistening against the hairless dome of his skull.

"The voices!" screamed the prince. "The voices!"

The physician read his lips. He had turned off the power for his ears when the wind had first brought its pleasure and pain and he could guess at what troubled his master.

"Think of pleasant things," he suggested. "Of the sighs of women, the laughter of children, the song of the birds."

"Fool!" The prince snarled his anger but the man made sense, more sense than the wind which carried the tormenting voices. But he could not do it alone. "Bring drugs," he ordered. "Euphorics. Hurry!"

Drugged, dreamlike, drifting in illusion, the prince sprawled in his chair and thought of pleasant things. Of combats and diversions yet to come. Of the richness which life had to offer and the painful joy of complex jests—painful to the victims, of course, never to him. And he thought of the Lady Seena, the most pleasant thing of all.

He was not alone. Rigid in her chair, her room open to the wind, the Matriarch of Kund sat alone in a world of memories. She listened again to the deep, strong voice of a man and could imagine his touch, firm yet tender, the hands on her shoulders, her waist, the curve of her hips. Her lips pursed to his kiss, the blood running hot in her aged veins.

"Darling!" she whispered. "Oh, my darling!"

" My love ," echoed the voice in her mind. " Gloria, my love. I am yours for all eternity. We are meant to be together—I cannot live without you. My darling, my love, my own !"

A man, dust for over eighty years, now talking and breathing at her side, his voice, his beloved voice, soft in her ears.

" I love you, my darling. I love you… love you… love you … "

Another voice, thin, high, childish.

"Mummy! Look, mummy. See what I have!"

A scrap of root shaped in the likeness of a man, a doll drawn from nature. Arms and legs and the rudiments of a face. With cosmetics she had drawn in the details, the eyes and lips and ears. With lace from her handkerchief she had fashioned a dress. The sun had been warm that day, and the air full of tenderness. Her heart ached with the memory of it.