To Conquer Chaos

The lazy, irritating drone of the fly started again, and it buzzed up from the place where it had landed on the Duke’s night-couch. Again the Duke swiped at it and missed. He said, “The barrenland is three hundred miles around. So its diameter isn’t much over a hundred. If there’s anything there, it’s at the centre, one may presume. We’ll carry maximum loads a day’s march from the edge, transfer the unconsumed portion to those who are going on and send back part of the column. We’ll continue like this and come to the middle with a party of a few score, hand-picked, who can make it back to the outside world without further support on minimum rations and forced marches.”

“A few score? To cope with whatever hell’s brood we may find?”

“I’m convinced that people are still living in the barrenland!” the Duke snapped. “Think it out, Yan! We’ve learned from clues dropped by Granny Jassy that part at least of the barrenland was created deliberately, to serve as a quarantine area around some source of danger in the middle-correct?”

Yanderman shrugged and nodded.

“In that case, we don’t have to think of the barrenland as a natural desert with no resources at all. We’ve established that there are streams flowing out from it, which are drinkable when they emerge, so we’ll manage for water-our worst single problem. Fuel-well, this isn’t a long march, is it? A slow one, certainly, but it’s summer! And consider this, too.” He leaned on the corner of his big table.

“We know beyond doubt that the things from the barrenland are coming in smaller numbers than they used to. I’m sure this isn’t accident. If they were spawning and breeding in the barrenland, you’d expect them to multiply! No, I suspect that there are people living in the middle of the barrenland: a party of volunteers-or their descendants, by now-charged with preventing the things’ access.” Again he swiped at the annoying fly, missing it the third time. “And the diminishing plague of things here at Lagwich is a measure of their relative success.”

His eyes blazed at Yanderman, who moved uncomfortably on his chair. Foolish or not, it was a grand design to re-establish contact with such heroes. And hearing Duke Paul speak of it was enough, surely, to convert the most cautious audience. Maybe it could be done. It would certainly be magnificently audacious to try it …

The Duke’s hand flashed through the air and closed this time around the fly, squashing it. He glanced down at his palm before wiping off the messy remains, and in that pose he stiffened. Yanderman looked at his handsome profile, and likewise froze.

After a moment, he said, “Sir …” His voice sounded peculiarly cracked and squeaky.

“Yes?” The Duke didn’t look up.

“Sir, there’s a patch of green among your hair!” Yanderman leapt to his feet and came close. “It looks like the mould which was on Ampier!”

The Duke nodded and held out his hand with the fly on it. Yanderman tore his eyes away from the deadly fuzz he had seen on his chiefs head and examined the insect. On its hairy legs, quite distinctly visible, was more of the same green mould.

Two and two came together in Yanderman’s mind. The fly had circled the Duke’s night-couch-on which Ampier had been laid! He strode over to it and whipped aside the cushions.

There, perhaps where a drop of Ampier’s blood had fallen: there, where at night the Duke’s head rested, was a smear of the alien greenness, concealed to the casual glance by seeming to form part of the pattern on a multi- coloured blanket, but now blazing out at Yanderman so fiercely he felt its shape imprinted on his very brain, like a branding-iron.

“Bring me a medic,” the Duke said after a small eternity. “And-Yan! Tell nobody else! Do you understand? Tell nobody else!”

XI

“Of course I believe you, even if no one else does!” Idris insisted. But a little imp of doubt rode snickering on the words, and Conrad’s heart sank.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “You think this is just another of my stories. I’ve told you so many tales you think I can’t keep my life and my dreams apart any longer.”

In her eyes he could read that his guess was correct, but he had no chance to hear her confirm or deny it, for at that moment the kitchen door of the house, which she had been holding ajar while speaking to him, was snatched fully open.

“Idris!” Her mother’s bony-knuckled hand fell on the girl’s shoulder and pulled her back. “If I’d known you were talking to Conrad I wouldn’t have let you come to the door!”

Past the woman’s acid face Conrad saw the interior of the kitchen. There was a man standing there, legs astraddle on the tiled floor-tall, brawny, finely dressed, watching the scene with some curiosity.

“Now you listen to me, Idle Conrad!” the mother shrilled. “Idris doesn’t want you plaguing her any more, understand? And I don’t want you around here either-my daughter’s meant for someone better than a no-good stewer of soap! If I catch you at this door again except to fetch the ashes, I’ll lay about you with a broomstick, is that clear?”

Yes. It was all too clear to Conrad. It was clear to anyone in Lagwich who had a girl with an ambitious mother and who was not already formally betrothed. That man standing behind Idris there, with a sneer on his face, now lifting a hand to twist his fine black mustachios-that was a prize in the sight of Idris’s mother. All the mothers of the town seemed to regard the arrival of the army as a glorified marrying expedition, and there was already an unspoken competition to be the first to have a daughter pledged to one of the Duke’s soldiery.

Conrad looked at Idris. Idris looked at the Esberg soldier, at her mother, then back at Conrad, and could not meet his eyes. She lowered her gaze to the floor and her cheeks grew red.

Wordlessly, Conrad turned away, and the door was slammed behind him.

The whole universe must be conspiring against him-either that, or he was going out of his mind. He had killed the thing from the barrenland … hadn’t he? Yet when he came back there was no carcass to bear him witness-only the broken vat and the pile of ash, tossed now and scattered by the wind. They had wanted to beat him for tricking them; as it turned out, they were content to laugh, and drove him away to hide by himself and yield to unstoppable weeping.

Was his life ever going to be worth living?

He walked moodily down the streets, kicking at pebbles, dodging out of sight whenever he heard young people approaching. He saw several groups of soldiers on their way to visit with families for the day, proud, overweening, mocking this little town simply by the way they walked.

Arrogant bastards, Conrad thought bitterly. All of them, from their Duke down to the lowliest chowhand, acted as though being born in Esberg made them the next thing to gods.

Maybe it would be better to go to the barrenland-his father had wished him there often enough …

Go to the barrenland?

He stopped in mid-stride. As though the lightning of an idea had welded shut a circuit in his mind, he found himself remembering clues picked up from gossip of the past few days.

Go to the barrenland! Of course! If he was ever to shake the dust of Lagwich from his shoes, he might best do it now, while opportunity offered. The chance might never come again.

Next morning he rose very quietly so as not to disturb his father-who as usual had come home late, full of beer, and who now snored as though he might never wake. He had gone last evening to the stream and cleansed himself as thoroughly as for a harvest-day. Now he sorted out from the bag which held his entire clothing the least tattered and most presentable garments he owned; some of them dated back to his early teens and were ridiculously tight on his full-grown body, but they would have to serve.

Then he collected from its hiding-place a sack of the fine white soap which he had put away in accordance with his plan to sell soap at the army camp. The plan had come to nothing of course. The loss of two of his vats alone meant that he had no surplus to spare from the town’s requirements; moreover, since the disastrous episode of the disappearing carcass there had been some houses where he could not face calling for ash or grease-the occupants were too ready to lash him with taunts.