'Let's not worry about the ghosts,' I said.
She'd asked the same question once before. It was just like a woman. Get into some sort of trouble and they'll come up with the silly questions.
Chapter 13
I woke and it was night, but immediately I remembered what had happened and where we were. I raised up to a sitting position and to one side of me saw the dark form that was Cynthia. She was still asleep. Just a few hours more, I thought, and Elmer and Bronco would be back and we could be on our way. It had been all damn foolishness, I told myself. We could have kept on with them. I had been sleepy, certainly, and riding a horse for the first time in my life had not been an easy chore, but I could have managed. Cynthia had been played out, but we could have strapped her onto Bronco so that if she fell asleep she would not have fallen off, but Elmer had insisted on leaving us behind while he and Bronco shagged the horses deep into the mountains that loomed ahead of us.
'There can't nothing happen,' he had said. 'This cave is comfortable and well hidden and by the time you've had some sack time we'll be back again. There is nothing to it.'
I blamed myself. I should not have let him talk us into it. I didn't like it, I told myself. We should have stayed together. No matter what had happened, we should have stayed together.
A shadow stirred near the mouth of the cave and a soft voice said, 'Friend, please do not make an outcry. There is nothing you must fear.'
I came surging to my feet, the hair prickling at the nape of my neck. 'Who the hell are you?' I shouted.
'Softly, softly, softly,' said the voice, softly. 'There are those who must not hear.'
Cynthia screamed.
'Shut up!' I yelled at her.
'You must be quiet,' said the lurker in the shadows. 'You do not recognize me, but I saw you at the dance.'
Cynthia, on the verge of another scream, caught her breath and gulped. 'It's the census-taker,' she said. 'What does he want here?'
'I come, fair one,' said the census-taker, 'to warn you of great danger.'
'You.would,' I said, but I did not say it loudly, for all this business of his about talking softly and not making any outcry had sunken into me.
'The wolves,' he said. 'The metal wolves have been set upon your trail.'
'What can we do about it?'
'You stay very quiet,' said the census-taker, 'and hope that they pass by.'
'Where are all your pals?' I asked.
'They are around somewhere. They are often with me. They hide when they first meet people. They are a little shy. If they like you they'll come out.'
'They weren't shy at the dance the other night,' said Cynthia.
'They were among old friends. They had been there before.'
'You said something about wolves,' I reminded him. 'Metal wolves, I think.'
'If you'll come most softly to the entrance, I think that you might see them. But please to be most quiet.'
Cynthia was close beside me and I put out my hand to her and she grabbed it and hung on tight.
'Metal wolves,' she said.
'Robots, more than likely.' I don't know why I was so calm about it. Stupidity, I guess. In the last two days we had encountered so many screwy things that metal wolves, at first, didn't seem too bad. Just sort of commonplace.
Outside the cave mouth the moon lighted up the landscape. The trees stood out almost as plain as if it had been day and in between them ran little grassy places dotted with boulders. It was wild, rough country and, somehow, it sent a shiver through me.
We crouched just inside the entrance and there was not a thing to see, just the trees and the-grassy patches and the boulders and beyond them the dark lift of hills fearsome in their darkness.
'I don't…' Cynthia began, but the census-taker clucked at her and she said no more.
We crouched, the two of us, hand in hand, and it seemed a silly business. There was nothing stirring; not even the trees, for there was no wind.
Then there was a movement in the shadow underneath a tree and a moment later the thing that had made the movement trotted out into the open. It glittered in the moonlight and it had about it a sense of fiendish strength and ferocity. It was the size of a calf, perhaps, although because of the moonlight and the distance, the size was hard to judge. It was lithe and quick, with a nervousness about it, stepping high and daintily, but there was in its metal body a feel of power that could be perceived even from some hundreds of feet away. It quartered nervously about, as if it might be seeking out a scent and for a moment it switched about and stared directly at us-stared and seemed to strain toward us, as if someone might have held it on a leash and it yearned to break away.
Then it turned and took up its running back and forth and all at once there were three instead of one of them-slipping through the moonlight, running in the woods.
One of them, as it turned toward us in its running, opened its mouth, or what would have been its mouth had it been a biologic creature, exposing a seried rank of metal teeth. When it shut its mouth, the clash of the teeth coming back together came clear to us, crouching in the cave.
Cynthia was pressing close against me and I disengaged my hand from hers, put my arm about her and held her very close, not thinking of her, I am sure, as a woman in that moment, but as another human being, another thing of flesh and blood that metal teeth could rend. Clutching one another, we watched the wolves, seeking, running-I got the impression they were slavering-and, somehow the idea crept into my mind that they knew we were nearby and were seeking us.
Then they were gone. As quickly as they had appeared, they disappeared, and we did not see them go. But we still stayed crouching there, afraid to speak, afraid to move. How long we stayed, I do not know.
Then fingers tapped against my shoulder. 'They are gone,' the census-taker said. I had, until he tapped me, forgotten about the census-taker.
'They were confused,' he said. 'Undoubtedly the horses milled around down there while you were being installed in the cave before your companions went away. It took them a while to work out the trail.'
Cynthia tried to speak and choked, the words dying in her throat. I knew exactly how it was; my own mouth was so dry I wondered if I would ever speak again.
She tried again and made it. 'I thought they were looking for us. I thought they knew we were somewhere near.'
'It is over now,' the census-taker said. 'The present danger's past. Why don't we move back into the cave and be comfortable?'
I rose, dragging Cynthia up with me. My muscles were tense and knotted from staying still so long in such an uncomfortable position. After staring so long out into the moonlight, the cave was dark as pitch, but I groped along the wall, found our piles of sacks and baggage and, sitting down, leaned against them. Cynthia sat down beside me.
The census-taker squatted down in front of us. We couldn't really see him because the robe he wore was as black as the inside of the cave. All one could see of him was the whiteness of his face, a pasty blob in the darkness, a blob without any features.
'I suppose,' I said, 'that we should thank you.'
He made a shrugging motion. 'One seldom comes on allies,' he said. 'When one does he makes the most of it, does whatever is possible to do.'
There were moving shadows in the cave, flickering shadows. Either they had just arrived or I had failed to notice them before. Now they were everywhere.
'Have you called in your people?' Cynthia asked, and from the tightness of her voice I guessed what it must
