contacts; why can't he order up one of those big military transport choppers? Better still, why doesn't he just call on ahead and arrange for a new righting force to be waiting for us?'
'He could probably do any or all of those things/ Lardis answered, 'but how would it look if we all arrived together at our next camp? Wouldn't you consider that indis — er, indisc — er, indiscreet, Jake? Remember, it's no easy thing for a man or men to hide their intentions from the Wamphyri. Any event unusual enough to arouse the interest of ordinary citizens is bound to arouse theirs, too.'
'Like a sudden influx of specialist troops?' said Jake. 'Indeed,' said Lardis, with a nod. 'And as for starting out fresh with a brand new platoon of soldiers… but doesn't that go against the very first rule? The fewer people who know about us—' 'The longer we survive/ said Jake.
'Hah!'said Lardis. 'Finally we make progress. And the problem with Mrs Miller becomes that much clearer, too.'
The first vehicles were pulling out now, and the Old Lidesci grunted his approval. 'This I like/ he said. 'It's what the Traveller is all about: constant movement between one place and the next. On Sunside, we Szgany became Travellers to stay ahead of the Wamphyri; we rarely stood still for very long in any one place. But here? Here we are the hunters. We move to track them down, and then we kill the bastards! Oh, yes, I like it a lot.'' He smacked his lips.
The pair had arrived at the place of last night's campfire. The back-burner, stoves and oven were gone, but a steaming pot of coffee and a few paper cups had been left beside the trench. And as these very different men from entirely different worlds sat down on the last of the folding chairs, Jake said, 'Lardis, why don't you tell me about Sunside/Starside? I mean, all about Sunside/Starside, or as much as I can take in. For since that's where all this seems to have started, maybe it's my best starting place, too/
And Lardis said, 'As you will. But I may as well tell you now, it still won't answer your one big question/
'I had a feeling it wouldn't/ Jake grunted. 'But tell me anyway/
And in a low growly voice, in words that strove valiantly to accommodate Jake's language — and when they failed reverted to Lardis's native Szgany, which the listener took in as best he could — the Old Lidesci complied…
'As its name suggests, though in more senses than one, Sunside/ Starside is a divided world. On Sunside, a slow and benevolent sun spins out days to more than four times the length of Earth days. But it sits low in the sky and casts long shadows — the shadows of the barrier mountains — on Starside. And the gloom and the long nights of Starside must have been the greatest of aids in the evol — er, the evolution, yes, of the Wamphyri.
'We don't know how it started; it happened in a time lost to memory except in myths and legends, campfire stories carried down — and altered, of course — by word of mouth. But before the Wamphyri there was something of a young civilization, in a world much like this world, with oceans and mountains, islands and continents, and even seasons. And its peoples were setting out to explore it, just as your first sailors explored yours.
'Then, an accident. Not of Man but of Nature. A white sun fell from the sky. Ben Trask will tell you it was some kind of 'singularity'… but that is science, of which I know very little. Anyway, it bounced over the world like a flat stone skipping on water. In one place where it bounced, the impact caused its outer shell to break in pieces which fell to earth in such numbers they couldn't be counted. According to Nathan Keogh — called Kiklu upon a time — the land there became hot; chemicals in the soil gathered into pools; acids ate the white sun's metal skin into rust. Thus a 'Great Red Waste' came into being, which today lies east of the barrier mountains.
'But the core of the white sun made a final leap. Shrinking, it sped west and slightly north; and such was its lure or fascination — its incredible 'gravity?' — that even as it fell to earth it drew up from the earth those mountains that formed the barrier range.
'I've probably made light of this; it should be said that the entire planet was in shock, convulsion. Lightnings crashed, the earth shook and broke open, and oceans stood on end, hurling themselves upon the land. From a benign world, the planet was changed to a nightmare. Entire races were wiped out, vanishing forever in the tumult of earth and fire, wind and water. It can't be known for a fact, but Trask's science has created a model for such a disaster which calculates that ninety-five out of every hundred human beings on my homeworld were killed in that historic upheaval! The seasons were no more; even our world's orbit around its sun was changed, again by the 'gravity' of the white sun, which had not destroyed itself but come to rest in a crater on Starside. The barrier mountains reared where none had reared before, and north of the mountains grim and pitiless lands of ice shone dark blue under writhing auroras. It was as if a hell had descended from the sky, and the Szgany — those of my race who remained — were its denizens.
'But they weren't its only denizens… 'At first, there were no Wamphyri. But there were always other peoples. The Szgany had avoided other races; they deemed them strange and called them un-men. Among these others, survivors of a northern clan of troglodytes now settled in caverns in the lee of Starside. Un-men from warmer southern climes, secretive desert folk known as the Thyre, became inhabitants of the burning regions south of Sunside's fertile green belt. It is even said that a race of cannibals — necromancers who tortured and ate the dead — existed and perhaps still exist in a remote far eastern country beyond the Great Red Waste, the mountains, and all other places known to the Szgany. Of these latter: I have never seen one, and do not wish to.
'But all of this resettling, and all of the planet's gradual recovery, took years and centuries and even millennia. Trask has said that it must have seemed like 'an endless nuclear winter.'
Well, to the people of the time, I suppose it was. But it did end eventually. And then there were no seasons, or only the very smallest climatic changes; and the green belt close to the barrier mountains was the only land in all of Sunside that could support the Szgany tribes, who slowly but surely began to multiply and forage in the forests.
'On Starside, where a great pass splits the mountainous divide, there in its crater resting-place at the fringe of the barren boulder plains the white sun sat like a blind eye deep in its socket, shining its white light up into the night like a beacon, or perhaps a warning? It was like… like a door, or a gateway to the unknown! For if a man should climb down to touch that blinding light… ah, be sure he would not come up again! And because it had brought hell to the Szgany, it became known as the Hell-Lands Gate, aye.
'From then on, hunters and wanderers in the heights of the barrier mountains would look down on Starside and see the light of the Hell-Lands Gate, and they would curse it by their stars, and turn their faces away. And the faces of all the Szgany were turned away from Starside and its Gate.
'But then, who would be interested in exploring Starside? What was Starside but barren and endless boulder plains reaching north, and towering stone pinnacles — stacks, or 'buttes,' as Trask calls them — reaching thousands of feet into the sky, and to the north the frozen oceans, and beyond the oceans the Icelands with their eerie auroras? No fit habitation for men, my friend, where the sun shone only on the topmost spires, and the cold was a knife in your bones. I have been to the foot of one of those great fangs… that far but no further. And now, thanks to Harry and his sons, there are no aeries as such…
'But it appears I've gone ahead of myself. Best if I slow down. I was speaking of the past, and this is how it was:
'Came the vampires. Ask me how, I can only shake my head. Today, no man knows. None living, anyway. We know their spores were born in the swamps west of the farthest reach of the barrier mountains, and Nathan Keogh has spoken of similar swamps in the east. Very well then, that's where they came from, but how did they get there? Ben Trask has a theory — his people, these E-Branch people, have theories for most things — which has it that they were released into my world's skies out of the debris of the white sun: an alien life form from the stars. Perhaps it is so, but I am not a scientist.
'Anyway, and however it was, they came. Legend has it that Shaitan was the first. Because he couldn't bear the sun, he co-habited with trogs in the gloom of Starside caverns. But he was more like unto a man, and he wondered about the Szgany, of whom the trogs had told him. Finally, when he grew weary of the company and the blood of trogs, he came in the night into Sunside. And the curse of the vampire — Shaitan's mark, his vices — was left on all the tribes of the Szgany for all time to come.
'There's that of Shaitan in all of us, and I think in all of your people, too, especially the espers — but mercifully it amounts to very little. Watered down by time and blood, we see it only in these rare talents that Ben Trask collects and uses against the forces of evil. In him it's his ability to see the truth and therefore to recognize falseness; in Goodly it's his visions of the future, and in me it's my seer's blood, warning me of dangers whose scent is blown on the air, felt in. running waters, and glimpsed in the leaping flame of fires or patterns in the dust. When all is not well, I feel it. And in you—
