John Brunner - To Conquer Chaos

“Call it the first fruit of my research into your mind,” Yanderman explained. “I made notes of as many of the things you described as I could manage. You can visualise the barrenland before it was made barren, as you know; in two or three more sessions it should be possible to extract from what you tell me the kind of information which will enable us to cross it and survive. Most importantly, you remember the course of streams and rivers. You can visualise distances, too, with impressive accuracy. What I want to prepare”-he took up a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper-“is a map of the nearer part of the barrenland on which we can work out a path involving not more than a few hours’ travel away from water at any point. We can carry food and fuel between us, enough for the whole journey, if we can avoid having to load up with more than a canteen of water apiece.”

He sketched a rough circle on the paper, occupying almost the entire square of the sheet. In the centre of it he put a cross.

“But even more important,” he said under his breath, “is to know what was sited there in the middle.”

“Why?”

“Rost’s ‘devil’, of course.” Yanderman stared down at the paper for a long moment, then grunted and put it aside. He rose to his feet, stretching limb by limb.

“I still don’t see how it’s possible for these visions of mine to be memories of the past,” Conrad ventured. “Or rather I don’t see why they necessarily have a connection with anything real.”

“Don’t you?” Yanderman sounded surprised. “Boy, where in Lagwich would you have got concepts like the ones you describe? I suppose mere imagination could carry the mind from a Lagwich-sized village to a city of a million people. But there’s a gap between anything in your direct experience and the notion of self-controlling machines, of flying through the air, walking to other worlds. As a matter of fact,” he added with a rueful smile, “that last one is so fantastic I’m inclined to wonder whether it’s not an exception.”

“Yes- what other worlds?” Conrad agreed eagerly. “Where? Where’s there room for them? And if the world we know is big enough for you to march fourteen days here from Esberg, surely it ought to be big enough for anybody’s taste! Why would they have wanted to go elsewhere?”

“For the same reason Duke Paul wanted to lead his army into the barrenland,” Yanderman said. “I confess I thought he was-oh, not exactly crazy, but at least excessively confident. And in one sense he was, for his army deserted on his death, and might well have mutinied even if he’d survived. But in another and more important sense he was absolutely right. Here you’ve had Lagwich existing for centuries on the edge of the barrenland-long enough to get to know the limitations of its dangers if anyone had wished-and you’ve had yourself, born with a gift that provides access to information once thought to be lost beyond recall. Put the two together, as I’m doing, and at once the idea of crossing the barrenland becomes a practical proposition. And it’s ridiculous to hold back from a practical proposition simply because nobody’s ever done it before.”

There was a gap in that chain of reasoning, Conrad felt. But at the moment he couldn’t locate it. He was suddenly drowsy, as though his stock of nervous energy had run dry, and within another few minutes he was stretched on the ground under a pillaged blanket, limp as a child’s toy.

Yanderman’s air of calm confidence lent Conrad a veneer of boldness. But it remained only a veneer until after the irreversible step had been taken and they were deep in the barrenland-so deep that when they looked back they saw nothing of the green and fertile country around Lagwich, only the dusty rolling slopes and snag-toothed rocks which they had traversed.

And then it sprang upon Conrad’s mind like a lightning flash. This was the barrenland-solid ground, very quiet, dead-seeming, but not utterly alien. It had once been like the land he knew, and might perhaps be so again.

Sensing a change in his companion’s attitude, Yanderman gave him a crooked smile.

“Not so bad once you’re in it, hey?” he suggested.

“No, I guess not,” Conrad admitted. “The only thing is, it’s so barren it’s not very surprising people haven’t wanted to enter it. I mean there’s nothing to temp you in!”

“There could have been plenty of temptation,” Yanderman contradicted. “The mystery of it, for instance, should have been enough. Lack of guts held people back-and that’s odd in itself, since even your white-livered townsfolk in Lagwich were bold enough in tackling things that trespassed on their land.”

He settled his heavy load of equipment more comfortably about him and trudged on. A few paces behind Conrad followed. It was all too true what Yanderman had said about carrying water; even though they had confined themselves to what Yanderman regarded as indispensables they were still immensely burdened, and some of the items were awkward.

Like this gun, for example. Yanderman had explained its working in simple terms, and Conrad had caught on quickly because similar things had cropped up in his visions. But it was a devilish difficult problem keeping it comfortably slung among the various bags, cartons and bundles he also bore.

He preferred the sword hanging from its frog at his waist.

The proof that Yanderman was right about the content of the visions came the afternoon of the first day. They located a stream running south-eastwards which had been marked up in advance in their crude map. Conrad was glad to slake his dusty throat and rinse his sand-eroded feet.

Yanderman, however, was not quite so eager. He chose to walk around on the bank for a while, studying the lie of the terrain. When he returned, it was to beckon Conrad and point out to him some curious marks in the soft ground near the water’s edge.

“A thing has been here recently,” he said.

For a moment Conrad suffered a giddying return of the fear which the mention of things from the barrenland used to evoke in him. Then his eyes focused on the marks. They were made by strange hoofs in the form of three sides of a square, with a forward projection from each closed corner.

“Then it won’t be bothering us,” he said.

“Why not?”

“It’s the spoor of the thing I killed and your lieutenant took to show off in the army camp,” Conrad explained.

“Are you sure?” Yanderman demanded, and then went on before Conrad could answer, “It’s not that I doubt your memory. It’s just that-well, might there be more than one such thing? ”

“Never since the foundation of Lagwich have two things that looked alike emerged from the barrenland,” Conrad declared positively. “Indeed, that’s one of the reasons why the wise men insisted on their devilish nature-what known beast can exist by itself, without others of its kind to help it reproduce? And yet, as you’ve argued to me, this doesn’t fit with their substantial form and the way they can be killed like an ordinary animal …” He shook his head. That problem was still too deep for him.

“Then I guess we can relax,” Yanderman agreed. “But by night we’ll keep watch in turns.” He squinted towards the point where rocks closed in around the little stream.

“If we follow this bank to the bend I’ve marked on the map, that should be a good place to spend the night. And in the morning we can strike virtually due north to the next water.”

The first night’s watching was a fearful experience. Shadows acquired lives of their own; twice Conrad woke his companion in alarm at what proved to be nothing worse than a breeze stirring the dust. The second night was not so bad. The day which followed, however, was the worst part of the trip; according to Yanderman’s map, it was necessary to cross dry ground for a full eight hours to avoid a wasted trip to the east, and at that point the going became rougher-less sandy and much more rocky.