Like so many other fairy tales, I thought, it was a horror story. I She lifted her head. 'I'm all right now,' she said. 'I'm sorry.'
I put my fist underneath her chin and tilted up her face. I bent and kissed her on the lips.
'Now let us go and get the wood,' she said.
The sun was nearly gone, but it still was daylight. Lying along the foot of the cliff, we found scattered wood. A lot of it was cedar, dead branches that had fallen off the trees clinging to the bare face of the rock.
'It's a good place to have a fire,' I told her. 'No one can see it. They'd have to be directly opposite the opening to see it.'
'What about the smoke?' she asked. 'This is dry wood,' I said. 'There shouldn't be much smoke.'
I was right. The wood burned with a bright, clean flame There was scarcely any smoke. The night chill had not settled in as yet, but we huddled close beside the blaze. It was a friend and comfort. It beat back the dark. It drew us together. It warmed us and made a magic circle for us.
The sun went down and out beyond the cleft dusk closed in rapidly. The world went dark and we were alone.
Something stirred out beyond the circle of the fire, at the outer edge of dark. Something clicked upon the rock.
I leaped erect and then I saw the blur of whiteness. His metal body shining in the firelight, Wolf trotted in to us.
From his steel jaws hung the limp form of a rabbit.
Wolf was hell on rabbits.
Chapter 17
O'Gillicuddy and his gang arrived when we were Finishing off the rabbit. Without salt, it was somewhat short of tasty, but it was food and the only thing we'd had all day had been grapes. Just the fact of eating made life seem a bit more stable and ourselves not entirely lost.
Wolf lay between us, close beside the fire, stretched out, with his massive head resting on his metal paws.
'If he'd only talk,' said Cynthia, 'it would be very nice. Probably he could tell us what Was going on.'
'Wolves don't talk,' I said, chewing the shinbone of the rabbit.
'But robots do,' she said. 'Elmer talks. Even Bronco talks. And Wolf here really is a robot. He isn't any wolf. He's just made to look like one.'
Wolf shifted his eyes around, to look first at one and, then the other of us. He didn't say a word, but he beat hid metal tail upon the rock and it made a terrible racket. — 'Wolves don't beat their tails,' she said. 'How do you know that?'
'I read it somewhere. Wolves don't beat or wag their tails. Dogs do. Wolf is more like a dog than a wolf.'
'It bothers me,' I said. 'Here he was, to start with, thirsting for our blood. Suddenly he turns around in his way of thinking and is a pal of ours. It doesn't make much sense.'
'I'm beginning to believe,' said Cynthia, 'that nothing on the Earth really makes much sense.'
We sat by the fire, enclosed in the magic circle. The firelight flickered and flickered yet again and there seemed to be a strange sense of motion all around.
'We have visitors,' Cynthia said quietly.
'It's O'Gillicuddy,' I said. 'O'Gillicuddy, are you there?'
'We are here,' said O'Gillicuddy. 'There are many of us. We come to bear you company in this wilderness.'
'And to bear us word, perhaps?'
'Yes, indeed. Word we have to bear.'
'We would have you know,' said Cynthia, 'word or not, we are glad to have you here.'
Wolf flicked an ear, as if there were a fly, but there wasn't any fly. Even if there had been, it would not have bothered Wolf.
Ghosts, I thought. The place was full of ghosts, the principal one of which was named O'Gillicuddy. Ghosts were here, I thought, and we were accepting them as if they were people or had been people, and that was madness. Under normal circumstance, a ghost was acceptable, but here, under these conditions, they became not only acceptable, but normal.
And, thinking of it, I became aghast at the abnormality of our condition, how awry it was from the quiet beauty of Alden, how distorted even from the mock majesty of Cemetery. For, in fact, those two places seemed abnormal now. We had become so firmly set in the reality of this mad adventure that the ordinary places we had known now seemed strange and far.
'You are not, I fear,' O'Gillicuddy was saying, 'safely beyond the clutches of the ghouls. They still trail you with much blood thirstiness.'
'You mean,' I said, 'they want our scalps for Cemetery.'
'You have plucked forth the naked truth,' said O'Gillicuddy.
'But why?' asked Cynthia. 'Surely they are not friends of Cemetery.'
'No,' said O'Gillicuddy, 'they are not, indeed. Upon this planet, Cemetery has no friends. And yet there is no one here who would not do most willingly a favor for them, hoping a favor in return. Thus great power corrupts.'
'But there is nothing they would want from Cemetery,' Cynthia pointed out.
'Not at the moment, perhaps. But a favor deferred is still a favor and one that can be collected later. One can pile up points.'
'You said no one would refuse a favor,' I said. 'How about yourself?'
'In our case,' said O'Gillicuddy, 'there is a difference. Cemetery can do nothing for us, but what is perhaps of more importance, it can do nothing to us. We hope no favor and we have no fear.'
'And you say we aren't safe?'
'They are hunting for you,' said O'Gillicuddy. 'They will keep on hunting. You handed them defeat this morning and it lies bitter in their mouths. One the steel wolf killed and another died…'
'But they shot him themselves,' said Cynthia. 'A bullet meant for us. It was no fault of ours.'
'They still count it against you. There are two dead and there must be accountability. They do not accept the blame. They lay it all on you.'
'They'll have a hard time finding us.'
'Hard, perhaps,' said O'Gillicuddy, 'But find you they will. They are woodsmen of the finest. They range like hunting dogs. They read the wilderness like a book. A turned stone, a disturbed leaf, a bruised blade of grass-it says volumes to them.'
'Our only hope,' said Cynthia, 'is to find Elmer and Bronco. If we were together…'
'We can tell you where they are,' said O'Gillicuddy, 'but it's a long, hard way and you would be turning back into the very arms of the raging ghouls. We tried most desperately to reveal ourselves to your two companions so that we could lead them back to you, but for all that we could do they remained unaware of us. It takes a sharper- tuned sensibility than a robot can possess to discover us.'
'It all seems pretty hopeless to me,' said Cynthia, sounding considerably discouraged. 'You can't guide Elmer and Bronco to us and you say the ghouls are sure to find us.'
'And that isn't all,' said O'Gillicuddy, seeming ghoulishly happy at what he had to tell us. 'The Raveners are on the prowl.'
'The Raveners?' I asked. 'Are there more than one of them?'
'There are two of them.'
'You mean war machines?'
'Is that what you call them?'
'That's what Elmer thinks they are.'
