given new homes in its brain…
Then, in moments, the deed is done, city and peoples all are one, all flesh gone but minds remain, in the city's living brain. But a strange, unsettling feeling, courses through the city's brain, beats and pounds, calls out in anguish, like a beast refusing chains. Panic is the rush of souls, meeting hence from different poles, born of different worlds and finding, love and living not withstanding, that they have no common ground, city and peoples all fall down, all fall down, all fall down, down, down, down and down, city and peoples all fall down…
The last image of the invisible creature's projections was of a huge, convoluted brain, lying in a dark cavern, nestled in gossamer webs, pulsing with life but lacking any body to encase it.
The image flickered.
Was gone.
Slowly the five espers regained awareness of the real world…
Then the creature that has been plaguing us, Chaney said, is the living city itself — or at least the brain of the city that survived the body's death.
More than that, Melopina expanded. It's also the consciousness of a goodly portion of the millions of people who died in the city's collapse.
All of them mad, Tedesco 'pathed.
But why did they go insane? Kiera asked. I didn't fully understand that part of it.
The city made the mistake of thinking that since it had lived with people, contained them for centuries, it fully understood them. But it was apparently from another world — perhaps brought to Earth as a seed by our early space travelers — and it could not hope to understand the human mind. When it meshed with them, it drove them mad and pushed itself over the brink.
Melopina added to Tedesco's explanation. And since the brain is evidently immortal, it has trapped them in that state forever.
Kiera shuddered. Perhaps we should return to the craters, find the thing and destroy it.
Tedesco: I don't think so. I don't believe it wants to die.
Kiera: But what does it have to live for?
Tedesco: It has its compulsion.
Come again?
Tedesco: The city's behavior pattern reminds me of an ancient poem that survived the Last War. It was called “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and concerned an old sailor who spent his life repeating the story of a disaster at sea, compelled to repeat it as a form of penitence for his own complicity in that disaster. The city is a modern mariner.
I believe you're right, Jask 'pathed. I don't sense its presence any longer. I believe we're free of our unseen companion.
It's interesting to think about the power of its esp projections, Melopina said. It managed to follow us, psychically, for hundreds of kilometers, apparently without strain.
I'm glad we encountered it, Tedesco 'pathed.
Glad to lose all that sleep? — Chaney.
The living city taught us a valuable lesson, Tedesco 'pathed.
Then I'm a poor student — Chaney.
Tedesco: It taught us that it is fine to mesh minds as closely as the five of us have — as long as the parts of a gestalt are all of the same species. Such close contact between beings evolved on other worlds, under other circumstances, can bring madness. When and if we meet the Black Presence, we must be careful to hold our telepathic probing to minimal levels.
Then, leaving the Maiden at rest in the middle of the Hadaspuri Sea, they all slept soundly for the first time in days.
29
The Maiden crossed the Hadaspuri Sea without need of sails and put to shore twenty kilometers west of the isolated town of Langorra, which lay in the shadow of the Jinyi Fortress. The five espers hiked west and north, into the great pine forests, until they came to the village of Hoskins' Watch. Here they bartered for winter clothes to outfit Jask and Melopina against the rigors of snow and ice, which they would soon have to endure; Tedesco, Chaney and Kiera were comfortable enough in their own skins. They also obtained five sets of snowshoes for use in the high country, and spent a few minutes admiring the great statue of Hoskins, which stood at the edge of the town, peering down the rugged Lancerian Valley, an inscrutable expression on the stone face. They left town without incident, following the rising land, the leaden sky, and the sentinel pines that sheltered them from the worst of the north wind.
Thereafter, they did not encounter another settlement or see another human being for some long days.
Sixty kilometers from Hoskins' Watch the gray sky lowered like a canvas flat all during the dull afternoon and, with none of the warning of rain, salted the earth with a fine, dry snow. The tiny flakes sifted through the pines, eddied at the espers' feet, slowly built up as darkness came on.
They made camp in the lee of a granite cliff, sheltered by pines on two other sides, with a beautiful downhill view of the snowscape being created before their eyes. They had taken to marching by day and sleeping by night, for they now felt safe from pursuit, ever since they had gone unrecognized in Hoskins' Watch.
By morning more than eight inches of snow had fallen, and the sky still sifted the white stuff.
Tedesco stomped through the fluffy carpet as if it were not there, oblivious of the huge white clouds he kicked up in his wake.
Chaney and Kiera frolicked in the snow together, running ahead of the others, sometimes loping on all fours, more often progressing in the more sedate, two-footed manner when they realized they were being watched. They were in their element now, and their spirits were higher than they had been at any other point in the journey.
Jask and Melopina were the laggards, having neither the strength to plow through the snowfall as Tedesco did, nor the grace and agility to dance across it as the wolf-people did. No crust had been built up, and the depth was not sufficient to permit the use of the snowshoes. The others held their pace in order not to pull too far ahead of the most humanoid couple in their group.
On the fifteenth day out of Hoskins' Watch, when they were in need of fresh meat, Chaney and Kiera unburdened themselves of their packs and set out to find and kill a deer. Within an hour they had cut one from its herd and driven it back toward the day's camp. When it was near enough to make butchering and storage convenient, they went for it, running fast, leaping, claws catching, teeth snipping first at its legs then, in moments when it stumbled, at its neck.
Kiera scrambled onto its back, bit deep near its jugular.
The deer squealed, turned, leaped confusedly.
Chaney was on it.
The deer reared up again.
It snapped its shoulders. Shook its head. Flung him away.
Be careful! — Melopina.
The wolf-people, on all fours, circled their quarry.
The deer stood with its head bowed, dripping blood on the snow.
Kiera feinted toward it.
The deer was instantly alert, skittering sideways.
She snarled at it. She moved closer, putting her head down, her paws widespread, hissed menacingly at the wounded animal.
The deer watched her carefully.
Forgotten, Chaney came in fast.
The deer squealed when the wolf hamstrung its left hind leg.
Snow flew.
Crippled, the deer tried to stagger past Kiera, hobbling on three legs, done for and knowing it. Its breath was
