again. Great thoughts, petty thoughts. He suffered. He slept.
Next morning the chase resumed. The dog was well; it seemed that the moths did not attack wantonly. Perhaps they died when delivered of their toxin, in the manner of bees. Probably a man could expose himself safely, if he only treated them deferentially. That might explain the boy's survival.
The trail led deeper into the badlands. Now they would discover who had more courage and determination: pursuer or fugitive.
The boy had obviously haunted this area for some time. If there were lethal radiation he should have died already. In any event, the Master could probably withstand any dosage the boy could. So if the lad hoped to escape by hiding in the hot region, he would be disappointed.
Still, the Master could not entirely repress his apprehension as the trail led into a landscape of stunted and deformed trees. Surely these had been touched. And game was scarce, tokening the irregular ravages of the fringe shrews. If radiation were not present now, it had not departed long since. -
He caught up to the boy again. The hunched conditlon of the youngster's body was more evident by full daylight and his piebald skin more striking. And the way he ran-heels high, knees bent, so that the whole foot never touched the ground-forelimbs dropping down periodically for support-this was uncanny. Had this boy ever shared a human home?
'Come!' the Weaponless called. 'Yield to me and I will spare your life and give you food.'
But as he had expected, the fugitive paid no attention. Probably this wilderness denizen had never learned to speak.
The trees became mere shrubs, scabbed with discolored woodrinds and sap-bleeding abrasions, and their leaves were limp, sticky, asymmetric efforts. Then only shriveled sticks protruded from the burned soil, twisted grotesquely. Finally all life was gone, leaving caked ashes and greenish glass. The hound whined, afraid of the dead bare terrain, and the Master felt rather like whining himself, for this was grim.
But still the boy ran ahead, bounding circuitously around invisible obstacles. At first the Nameless One thought it was strategy, to confuse the pursuit. Then, as he perceived the maneuvering to take forms that were by no means evasive or concealing, he pondered dementia. Radiation might indeed make mad before it destroyed. Finally he realized that the boy was actually skirting pockets of radiation. He could tell where the roentgen remained!
Dangerous terrain indeed! The Nameless One followed the trail exactly, and kept the hound to it, knowing that shortcuts would expose him to invisible misery. He was risking his health and his life, but he would not relent.
'Are you ashamed because you are ugly?' he called. He took off his great cloak and showed his own massive, scarred torso, and his neck so laced with gristle that it resembled the trunk of an aged yellow birch. 'You are not more ugly than I!' But the boy ran on.
Then the Master paused, for ahead he saw a building.
Buildings were scarce in the nomad culture. There were hostels that the crazies maintained, where wandering warriors and their families might stay for a night or a fortnight without obligation except to take due care with the premises. There were the houses of the crazies themselves, and the school buildings and offices they maintained. And of course there were the subterranean fortifications of the underworld, wherein were manufactured the weapons and clothing the nomads used-though only the crazies and the Master himself knew this. But the great expanse of land was field and fern and forest, cleared by the Blast that had destroyed the marvelous, warlike culture of the Ancients. The wilderness had returned in the wake of the radiation, open and clean.
This building was tremendous and misshapen. He counted seven distinct levels within it, one layered atop another, and above the last fiber-clothed story metal rods projected like the ribs of a dead cow. Behind it was another structure, of similar configuration, and beyond that a third.
He contemplated these, amazed. He had read about such a thing in the old books, but he had half believed it was a myth. This was a 'city.'
Before the Blast, the texts had claimed, mankind had grown phenomenally numerous and strong, and had resided in cities where every conceivable (and inconceivable) comfort of life was available. Thea these fabulously prosperous peoples had destroyed it all in a rain of fire, a smash of intolerable radiation, leaving only the scattered nomads and crazies and underworlders, and the extensive badlands.
He could poke a thousand logical holes in that fable. For one thing, it was obvious that no culture approaching the technological level described would be at the same time so primitive as to throw it away so pointlessly. And such a radically different culture as that of the nomads could not- have sprung full-blown from ashes. But he was sure the ultimate truth did lie hidden somewhere within the badlands, for their very
