“Perhaps you are no longer a man,” he said. “I would say you never were one. But I've always been a man, am a man, and will face this challenge as a man should.''
After that neither of them spoke for a long while. They watched the bright walls shimmering around them, absorbed the silence of the vault and became, themselves, fragments of quietude. Jask waited for an apology to balance what he considered an outrageous fit of pique on the other's part. Tedesco waited, too, but not for an apology. He waited for some sign that Jask was finally prepared to face the reality of their situation with more than unrelieved pessimism. In the end it was Jask who proved the weaker and who spoke first.
“You said the Black Presence was placed here to wait and watch us.”
Tedesco said, “Yes.”
“If it did exist, it must have been destroyed during the Last War.”
“It would have been well protected against destruction; it would have been impervious to human weapons.”
Jask thought a moment and said, “Even so, it must have died a natural death after all these thousands of years.”
“Perhaps its lifespan is enormous, compared to ours; a thousand years might pass for it as a day passes for you and me. Or maybe it was relieved of its duty by another observer.”
“You have all the answers,'' Jask said. “Yet I doubt you can explain why, if this Black Presence was put here to wait for mankind to develop extrasensory perception, it has not shown itself by now. You and I are not the only espers. Others have been found and executed numerous times in the last few years.''
Tedesco frowned, for this was the most difficult thing to explain. He had wrestled with the problem himself, many times, and had settled on an answer, though it was admittedly a weak one. Replying to Jask, however, he made himself sound doubtless and sure. “You wouldn't expect the Presence to keep a watch on every man and woman alive, would you? It must observe in a selective manner, choosing subjects here and there. It has apparently not yet encountered an esper. And until our numbers become substantial and organized instead of few and scattered, it might continually overlook us. I want to locate the Black Presence and force it to study us and accept us. I want the stars for myself, as well as for my children.”
Somewhat sarcastically, Jask said, “I suppose you have a map to find this mythological observer.''
Tedesco surprised him by saying, “Not just a single map— but three.” He turned and rooted in his rucksack, produced three sheets of yellowed vellum and placed them on the floor in front of him. “I have studied the legends of the Black Presence ever since my own psionic abilities began to grow. I've concluded it must be stationed in one of three places: in the Black Glass craters, in the Glacier of Light, or beneath the waters of Deathpit.”
“And how have you centered the search on these three points?” Jask inquired. “By drawing lots or tossing coins?”
“These three seemed the most reasonable of the hundred places mentioned in the legends. Besides, I have a faint precog ability; using that, I've sensed an aura of success in these three places.”
Jask unfolded the three maps and studied them. Each was richly illuminated with dragons and other netherworld creatures. He said, “Each of these places — the craters, the glacier, the pit — is in another quarter of the continent, and each is terribly far from here. Do you propose to travel through the Wildlands, through kilometers of beast-infested places, and through areas where other Pure enclaves will be looking for us?”
“I do propose it,” Tedesco said. “And I'm pleased to hear you use the plural—'us.' ”
“I may not go along,” Jask said quickly.
“What other options have you?” the bruin asked.
13
The party in the outer rooms of the General's enormous suite had been a raucous one, leaving much debris in its wake. Originally intended as a celebration of the General's success in apprehending and executing the two espers, it became a means of concealing the lack of that success. Much was eaten, much was drunk, much was spilled and wasted. The guests talked animatedly about the General's ruthlessness in driving the tainted fugitives into the Chen Valley Blight. Rather than permit them a quick death, the assembled guests philosophied, he had forced them into the realm of the Ruiner where they would suffer for untold years, growing constantly more contaminated; this was a far better end for such creatures than a merciful shot from the power rifles.
When the guests had gone, and when the suite lights had been lowered, the sanitation robots rolled out of their wall niches and scurried this way and that, like steel rats, nibbling at the refuse, scraping and scooping and scrubbing and polishing until the great man's home sparkled, fresh and new again. They would feed the collected waste into the central recycler of the fortress, where it would be reprocessed and packaged for reuse. Still, what the guests had enjoyed was original stock, supplied by prewar men — and what would be produced from the salvage was greatly inferior to what had been so carelessly consumed.
When the guests left, the General informed Merka Shanly, the party was still not over. It would be moved to the master bedroom.
At his request she had disrobed. She undressed him, slowly, as he liked. She permitted him — indeed, encouraged him — to fondle her slim and curveless legs, her deliciously flat buttocks, her narrow waist, the swell of her heavy breasts. He had loved the deathly whiteness of her skin in which the veins could be seen like deeply buried wires, and she had let him kiss that skin wherever he found it most pleasing. She had ministered to him in every way she knew, had played the mount to his rider and had brought him off. Afterward he rolled away from her, as a man might leave a dinner table where he has gorged himself, ignored her, drew his knees up to his broad chest and fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.
Merka Shanly was disappointed on two counts. First of all, she had expected a General to be a good lover, to know where to touch her and how to move her in order to bring her into her own time of joy. Instead he had been one of the worst lovers she had experienced, cold and aloof, all the heat of him concentrated in his stiffened member, a demanding heat that did nothing to warm her. But beyond that disappointment lay another, more serious. She had never expected to see a General, a man of responsibility to his people, wasting the precious prewar stores of food and other goods as they had been wasted at the party that night. He was less considerate of the future than any of his subjects. This last disappointment became a lingering anxiety that would not permit her sleep.
She slid out of bed.
Nude, she went into the main lounge of the palatial suite, padded across the thick carpet and commanded the shielded windows to become clear.
In moments they changed from mirror-black to clear glass and gave her a panoramic view of the night sky, the brilliant stars and the gibbous moon. Beneath these celestial bodies lay the tainted village where she had been only that morning, the forest and the mutated landscape of the Chen Valley Blight just beyond, the home of the Ruiner.
She, unlike the General and his subordinates, questioned whether the espers would be doomed in that place. They were, after all, already children of the Ruiner What purpose would that evil god have in corrupting them further? Better, he would send them out into other borderlands where his power was incomplete, in hopes they would corrupt other of Lady Nature's creatures.
She sat on the fur-covered couch next to the windows, her bare flesh made more lovely by the bluish light of the moon, and she stared at the stars, trying to decide what she wanted her future to be like. Clearly she could use her desirable body and her willingness to perform with it to hold the General in her influence for years to come; he had repeatedly told her that she was the most uninhibited woman he had ever taken. Yet, if the enclave continued to ignore the need for an austerity program— as they would under this thoughtless General — those few good years would be followed by starvation, degeneration and death. It appeared that if anyone were to stop this waste and make plans for continuation of the enclave once the stores had been depleted, she would have to be that one. That meant, besides bedding the General regularly, she would have to plot against him and, eventually, remove him from office.
Soon she would have to become a General herself.
She felt lonely. Cold.
