Part 4 (1/2)

”I reckon there's a lot everyone can't name, Professor.”

”True enough.”

Those handsome trees gave way to a third kind, something gnarled and ugly that Carver did not name for me, our conversation having wandered onto other topics. Between the limbs of those trees there were spiderwebs, thick as cotton or the hair in an old man's ears. Then that scene too gave way. The road led us out from the trees and along the edge of a valley that opened out to the sunlit horizon. It was one of those sudden and always unexpected vistas of the Western Rim, that are like seeing the whole world all at once.

”You know,” I said, ”the man who figures out a way to bottle and sell such a scene to the people back East will be twice as rich as Mr. Alfred Baxter on his best day.”

”Could be,” Carver said.

We were in the midst of this sort of repartee when he suddenly stiffened and cursed. He halted Golda with a tug on her reins and Mariette with a word. He walked to the edge of the road and he pulled his long hair back from his face and he looked out over the valley.

I asked Carver what he saw and he did not answer me. He walked to the back of the wagon and took the hatchet down from its hook. Ordinarily we used it for cutting firewood or clearing deadfalls from the road, or we used the blunt back-side for striking the Apparatus when the cylinders jammed. Still it was quite fearsome the way he held it now.

I said, ”What?”

He shrugged off his jacket and his already loose neck-tie and hung them from the big lever on the back of the Apparatus and said, ”Stay.”

It was hard to say whether he was speaking to me or the horses. I was somewhat insulted at being spoken to in that way by my a.s.sistant, though I guessed it had been so long since he'd been paid that that word no longer fairly described our relations.h.i.+p.

He turned his back and set off down the slope, with that bow-legged walk people have when they are balancing on a steep incline. It is something like the way bad actors walk to show that they are drunk.

His shoulders sank below the level of the road and then his head.

This was somewhat out of the ordinary for Mr. Carver, who was ordinarily level-headed and solid and silent and stable. He kept his own counsel and I was not allowed to look in his suitcases, but he was not p.r.o.ne to this sort of vanis.h.i.+ng act.

I walked to the edge of the road and looked out over the valley. Mr. Carver was a small bow-legged shape moving quickly down and into the distance. Beyond him the ground rolled up and down in the usual way- there were trees and rocks and black bushes. I did not see what had caught his attention.

”You stay,” I said, patting Mariette's flank. ”Keep the Apparatus safe and there's a raise in it for you when I get back.”

I set off after Carver.

He was moving fast and I quickly regretted the brief time I had wasted bantering with the horses, because I nearly lost sight of him.

The earth fell and rose. I caught sight of Mr. Carver black against the sky as he climbed high ground ahead. He crouched, steadying himself with his left hand on the ground and the ax out in his right.

I followed him. It seemed like we had been walking a long time and I began to worry about the Apparatus and considered turning back, but was unsure of the way. I could not imagine what he had heard or smelled or intuited so far from the road. I strained my ears and I sniffed the air and for a long time all I heard or scented was sun and dust and wind. Then at last there was a faint scent of burning.

When I caught up with Mr. Carver he was standing at the edge of a wide expanse of smooth gray rock. At the far edge of the expanse the rock rose in forms a little like breaking waves and among them there were the dark and narrow mouths of caves. In front of them was a great heap of charred wood.

Mr. Carver stood with the ax loose in his right hand. He did not turn to look at me but I knew him very well and I knew that he was aware of my presence.

I looked down and beneath my feet the rock was carved in the looping intricate designs of the Folk, and I realized that I had stepped on some sign or sigil of theirs, and maybe I only fancied that a sudden pain shot through my leg as if I had stepped on a snake. ”Mr. Carver,” I said.

He ignored me. He strode across the plain of rock as if he were the master of it.

I think I said that there were Folk living south of East Conlan when I was a boy. From time to time one of the Folk and one of East Conlan's men might even meet, uneasily, in the woods. There was little or no regular commerce between us but there was rarely violence, so long as both parties maintained the proper att.i.tude of wary respect for the other's prerogatives. Our world and theirs were superimposed, and there was tension. What I mean is that one did not lightly trespa.s.s. There were all the usual stories about the Folk seizing and torturing travelers, out of sheer wickedness or for revenge or for breaking their rules, although I do not think it ever happened to anyone in particular. There were all the usual Folk-tales about curses and the evil eye and my sister Jess used to tell me that before I was born a girl from East Conlan who went trespa.s.sing in the woods was transformed into a hare.

”Mr. Carver,” I repeated.

He knelt down by the mouth of a cave, where the heap of charred wood was scattered- except that it was not all wood. When my curiosity finally mastered my dread and I followed Carver I saw that as a matter of fact some of what I had taken for timber was bodies, burned.

They were the bodies of Folk, and there were seven of them. One could tell that they were Folk because of the long limbs and the useful-looking extra knuckle- though someone had severed the hands and feet from a couple of the bodies, maybe as trophies. The stones of their homes had been scattered and the wood used for the fire. Some other cruelties had been performed on the bodies, either before or after the burning. I will not recount those cruelties except to say that the man who did it was a monster.

I was aware of no appropriate prayers and so I just stayed silent for as long as I could stand.

”They say,” I said, ”that the Folk do not die the way you and I will one day die. That's the first thing every child learns about them. That they were made from a different plan when the world was different and that death for them is not final, but they return to the world, again and again, clothed in new-made flesh, as I once heard a Reverend put it.”

”In the end, maybe,” Carver said. His voice was flat. He had put the hatchet beside him on the ground.

”Do you think it's true? Would we know? Most people can't tell one from another anyhow. I don't know, you hear people say it but you hear people say a lot of things that aren't true. Like if you yawn without covering your mouth evil spirits get in and ride you. Or that burning a white calf keeps the rest of the herd safe from sickness. Or, well, you know.”

Carver said nothing. No flies gathered on the bodies, but nor did they get up and walk. There were what might be tracks on the ground but they meant nothing to me. There were sigils carved in the rocks and I studied them curiously but I could learn nothing from them.

”It may yet be true,” I said. ”The world is very large and we do not know the tiniest part of it.”

Sure that is trite, but it is true.

Carver stood. He scratched his beard.

I said, ”I used to think long and hard about what it would be like. When I was a boy, I mean. It kept me awake at night. The coming back, I mean. Into the dark and back into the light again and again. Like it's said the Great Powers do. Like stars. Around and around. In fact it seemed to me that maybe it was only men like us for whom death is final, and that was a kind of mistake in our making. As if death is only a word and has no meaning of its own. I don't know. I've often said that it was one of the great inspirations for the Ransom Process. You've heard me say that. I said it back in Kenauk.”

”Yeah.”

I was ashamed that I had started talking about myself again, but it was only to fill the silence of the rocks and the big blue sky above and Carver and the blackened bodies.

”You got questions,” Carver said. ”Go on then.”

”How did you know-?”

”Saw the smoke.”

”Is that a fact. I didn't see a d.a.m.n thing, Mr. Carver. I guess I don't pay you enough.”

”Huh,” he said. He looked around. He traced one of the signs carved into the rock with a finger. He peered into one of the dark openings in the rock but did not go in. Neither of us did. You don't go crawling into the Folk's secret places if you know what's good for you.

”Was like you knew this was here,” I said.

”Was it?”