The horse turned, looked up the hill at him, but did not panic.
Come here.
It snorted, bent, took a mouthful of grass, and, trotting at a brisk pace but not so fast as to frighten the other beasts, it climbed the hill and came up to Jask.
Jask patted its black nose.
The horse snuffled and nuzzled his head. Its tail swished back and forth, evidence of its trust in him.
He walked around its side, grabbed a handful of the thick mane along its spine, and swung himself to the center of its back.
Well? he 'pathed to the others.
Melopina walked forward, surveyed the animals below, chose one, and in minutes was mounted beside Jask.
We've acted somewhat like fools, Tedesco 'pathed.
Somewhat! Jask 'pathed.
You had your turn at bullheadedness, the bruin said. Have grace enough to permit us ours.
In ten minutes they were all seated atop the wild horses, though none of the horses was wild any longer.
As they rode down the hillside and sent the other horses galloping in a herd before them, Tedesco 'pathed to Jask, You're not the same Pure lad I led out of the Highlands of Caul.
I know, Jack said. But you are the same Tedesco — and I'm damned glad of that!
They grinned at each other for a moment, before the bruin suddenly became self-conscious.
Let's make some time now that we're off our feet! Tedesco roared.
He leaned over his enormous mount's sleek neck, clinging to the copious blanket of hair that lay over its back, kicked its sides lightly, and galloped swiftly away.
They rode during the day, stopping every two hours to walk their horses, water them, and stretch their own legs. They did not press the well-muscled beasts to achieve too great a distance in any single day, though they suspected the horses' endurance was greater than theirs; they all got blistered rumps in short order. Two things kept them from abusing the horses: First, they knew that they would need them for many weeks, and they did not want to wear them out and be left with hundreds of kilometers to cover on foot; second, since they had meshed with the beasts, they felt a certain sympathy, a tenderness, an obligation to be good masters.
From January Slash they passed into the sparsely populated buffer nation of McCall's Hold, a narrow strip of country, beyond which lay another pocket of the ubiquitous Wildlands, Iron Man's Trust. In the week they took to cross this small territory, they saw thousands of robots piled in rusting heaps in the streets of crumbling villages, which — judging from the scarcity of human skeletons — had been built for machines instead of for citizens of flesh and blood. They passed hundreds of robots that still performed tasks they had been programmed for, tasks now meaningless but carried out with an admirable diligence nonetheless. Still other metal men clanked mindlessly from building to building, sometimes turning baleful yellow sight receptors on the five espers as they passed through, more often ignoring them altogether. A few guardbots stopped them and demanded their business, threatened them with stubby guns built into metal chests and foreheads, but always let them pass when they said they were humans and had a right to go where they wished.
I feel so sorry for them — Melopina 'pathed.
Sorry? — Chaney.
They've got just enough intelligence to know things are not right and to want to set things straight, but they've not got the ability to cope with anything but an ordered world. From now until they all fall apart and rust, this world offers them no hope.
Machines can't feel — Chaney.
Not as we can, at least. But somehow, deep down within, I suspect they have a trace of a soul.
Romanticist, Chaney 'pathed.
Cynic.
In the center of Iron Man's Trust they came across a huge, coppery building which had withstood the centuries quite well but did not seem to be inhabited by anyone, man or machine. Inspecting it while their horses rested and grazed, the espers found ten thousand more robots, none of which had ever been activated or seen any use at all. They lay in airtight storage drawers that slid from the walls. Chaney used the butt of his power rifle to smash in the plasti-glass over one of these drawers to see, he said with a straight face, if the metal-man within could crumble into dust.
It did not.
They left Iron Man's Trust and ventured into the far western nation of Caloria Sunshine, struck south and, in twelve more days, reached the ruins of Velvet Bay. This city had been called by other names in the centuries man had lived in it, but all of these names were now forgotten. Nature had come back to claim the land, and from Nature came the crumbling city's name, for it was constructed on the hills surrounding a gorgeous, wide-mouth inlet of the great West Sea.
It was here, in Velvet Bay, that Deathpit waited.
The map Tedesco had did not pinpoint the location of the pit. For three days they quartered the ancient city, looking for something that might deserve such a sinister name — and in the late afternoon of their third search period, they discovered it. In the midst of dust and worm-eaten mortar, mold-laced plastics and shattered glass, the approach to Deathpit stood out like a beautiful woman in a group of crones…
The courtyard between the four large, prewar buildings was twenty meters across. The old cobblestones had been covered with some slick, shining material, like millions of silver flecks suspended in a two-foot thickness of glass. This caught the sunlight and dazzled the eyes with bright reflections. From each of the four entrances to the courtyard a meter-wide path of lusterless black stone led through the glittering material on both sides and directly to the pit. This was a hole, one meter in diameter, cut in the center of the courtyard floor. It was rimmed with a black stone curb and filled with rich darkness clear to its bottom.
This is it! — Melopina.
Don't get your hopes up — Tedesco.
But what else could it be but an accessway to the Presence?
Many things, the bruin 'pathed. None of which we've ever heard of.
Chaney retrieved a brick from one of the dilapidated buildings and dropped it into the pit. From the time it took to strike bottom, they learned the depth of the well was somewhere near thirty meters.
I can sense an intelligent mind, Melopina said.
And alien — Kiera.
But it seems more distant than a hundred feet — Jask.
If this is the Black Presence, Chaney said, why doesn't it contact us? We're what it's been waiting for.
Perhaps it is something else altogether — Tedesco.
I can sense alien landscapes, strange thoughts, too strange for a creature of this world to have — Kiera.
The living city's emanations were alien, too, Chaney reminded them. Yet it was not the Black Presence.
They formed a meditation circle beside the pit, joined hands and linked minds until their esp powers had coalesced into a single, strong psychic probe.
One hand… one hand… grasping, seeking… we are all one hand… Melopina directed them.
They managed to touch the shell of the creature's mind where it lay beneath the earth, feel the humming power of an extraterrestrial consciousness.
This is it! — Tedesco.
For once I do not need to play the devil's advocate, Chaney 'pathed. If there is a Black Presence, this being is what we want.
But it still remained detached, distant, unresponsive to their best efforts to establish telepathic contact. Indeed, except for a shudder now and again, the creature seemed oblivious to them.
They broke up their gestalt and rose from the ring.
Someone will have to go down there, get closer, find out why it isn't responding, Chaney 'pathed.
I will, Jask said at once. He felt, unaccountably, that if he did this last thing for them, he would have
