Part 3 (2/2)

”I worked in the Badlandth to the Thouth when I wath turned out of the factory,” it replied.

”South, it is then!” said the penner.

To reach the Badlands took them three days, in which time they skirted a burning city and destroyed two big machines which tried to approach and question them. The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man's talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purga-tory, where nothing moved but dust.

On the third day in the Badlands, the servicer's rear wheels dropped into a crevice caused by erosion. It was unable to pull itself out. The bulldozer pushed from behind, but succeeded merely in buckling the servicer's back axle. The rest of the party moved on. Slowly the cries of the servicer died away.

On the fourth day, mountains stood out clearly before them.

”There we will be safe,” said the field-minder.

”There we will start our own city,” said the penner. ”All who oppose us will be destroyed. We will destroy all who oppose us.”

At that moment a flying machine was observed. It came towards them from the direction of the mountains. It swooped, it zoomed upwards, once it almost dived into the ground, recovering itself just in time.

”Is it mad?” asked the quarrier.

”It is in trouble,” said one of the tractors.

”It is in trouble,” said the operator. ”I am speaking to it now. It says that something has gone wrong with its controls.”

As the operator spoke, the flier streaked over them, turned turtle, and crashed not four hundred yards away.

”Is it still speaking to you?” asked the field-minder.

”No.”

They rumbled on again.

”Before that flier crashed,” the operator said, ten minutes later, ”it gave me information: It told me there are still a few men alive in these mountains.”

”Men are more dangerous than machines,” said the quarrier. ”It is fortunate that I have a good supply of fissionable materials.”

”If there are only a few men alive in the mountains, we may not find that part of the mountains,” said one tractor.

”Therefore we should not see the few men,” said the other tractor.

At the end of the fifth day, they reached the foothills.

Switching on the infra-red, they began slowly to climb in single file through the dark, the bulldozer going first, the field-minder c.u.mbrously following, then the quarrier with the operator and the penner aboard it, and the two tractors bringing up the rear. As each hour pa.s.sed, the way grew steeper and their progress slower.

”We are going too slowly,” the penner exclaimed, Standing on top of the operator and flas.h.i.+ng its dark vision at the slopes above them. ”At this rate, we shall get nowhere.”

”We are going as fast as we can,” retorted the quarrier.

”Therefore we cannot go any farther,” added the bull-dozer.

”Therefore you are too slow,” the penner replied. Then the quarrier struck a b.u.mp; the penner lost its footing and crashed down to the ground.

”Help me!” it called to the tractors, as they carefully skirted it. ”My gyro has become dislocated.

Therefore I cannot get up.”

”Therefore you must lie there,” said one of the tractors.

”We have no servicer with us to repair you,” called the field-minder.

”Therefore I shall lie here and rust,” the penner cried, ”although I have a Cla.s.s Three brain.”

”You are now useless,” agreed the operator, and they all forged gradually on, leaving the penner behind.

When they reached a small plateau, an hour before first light, they stopped by mutual consent and gathered close together, touching one another.

”This is a strange country,” said the field-minder.

Silence wrapped them until dawn came. One by one, they switched off their infra-red. This time the field-minder led as they moved off. Trundling round a corner, they came almost immediately to a small dell with a stream fluting through it.

By early light, the dell looked desolate and cold. From the caves on the far slope, only one man had so far emerged. He was an abject figure. He was small and wizened, with ribs sticking out like a skeleton's and a nasty sore on one leg. He was practically naked and s.h.i.+vered continuously. As the Kg machines bore slowly down on him, the man was standing with his back to them, crouching to make water into the stream.

When he swung suddenly to face them as they loomed over him, they saw that his countenance was ravaged by starvation.

”Get me food,” he croaked.

”Yes, Master,” said the machines. ”Immediately!”

The Solites were little more than barbarians. Yet they tamed the strange machines and achieved a form of time travel with which they could return to earlier ages for flora and fauna to replenish their world. This is not a story about time travel. It concerns an old man called Chun Hwa who was full of years and had seen too much change to welcome more.

Blighted Profile.

Yalleranda sat in the Vale of Apple Trees, watching the old man on a horse. He was eight years old and rode the treetop branch as gracefully as the old man sat the white stallion. Spying became Yalleranda; when he was looking at the old man, unsuspected tensions added maturity to his face; an indefinable, alarming, com-pelling expression of agelessness showed through his childish beauty. He was in love with something he had only just found: something he saw in the old man that n.o.body else in the world could see.

The old man's name was Chun Hwa. This much Yal-leranda had learnt from the people of the village.

Any-thing else he knew about him, he knew only through observation.

The white stallion had climbed Blighted Profile every morning of the last week, picking its way among boulders still seared by the ancient heat of devastation. It climbed until the black stretch dropped away to one side, while on the other, a hollow wave full of sweetness, rose the Vale. Here the stallion halted, cropping gra.s.s, leaving Chun Hwa perched in the big saddle like a pulpit, able to look over the two worlds of good and bad earth.

On these occasions, Yalleranda climbed higher up the dope, moving as silently as blue moonlight among the apple trees, until he came to the last apple tree, whose embryo fruits, as yet no bigger than tonsils, were the loftiest in the Vale. Here he was so near to the old figure cut out of the blue sky above the Profile that he could hear his robes rustle in the breeze. He could almost hear his thoughts.

Young men think about the women they will love, old men about the women they have loved: but Chun Hwa was older than that, and he thought about Philosophy.

”I have lived ninety years,” he thought, ”and my bones are growing thin as smoke. Yet something remains to be done. An essence of me still remains inside: my inner-most heart: and that is as it was when I was a child. It is wonderful to think that after all the wars and cataclysms of my life, I am yet myself; a continuity has been preserved. Yet what am I? How can I know? I only know that when I think of what I am, I am dis-turbed and dissatisfied. If only I could round off my life properly....”

He looked about him, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his withered cheeks to a.s.sist the stiff muscles of his eyes.

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