Destiny Doll

ELEVEN

We went on-and on and on.

Day followed day and we traveled from dawn until the failing of the light. The weather held. There was no rain and very little wind. From the appearance of the country, rain came seldom here. The country changed at times. There were days when we struggled uphill and down in twisted badland terrain; there were other days on end when we traveled land so flat that we seemed to be in the center of a concave bowl-a shallow dish-with the horizons climbing upward on every hand. Ahead of us what at first had been a purple cloud lying low against the horizon became unmistakably a far-off mountain range, still purpled by the distance.

Now there was life, although not a great deal of it. There were honking things that ran along the hilltops when we crossed the badlands area and went streaking down the painted gulleys, gobbling their excitement. There were the ones we called the striders, seldom seen and always at a distance, so far off that even with our glasses we never got a good look at them, but from what we saw incredibly twisted life forms that seemed to be walking on stilts, lurching and striding along at a rapid rate, not seeming to move swiftly but covering a lot of ground. And out on the desiccated plains the whizzers-animals (if they were animals) the size of wolves that moved so fast we were unable to see what they really were or how they traveled. They were a blur coming toward us and a whish going past and another blur as they went away. But although they came close, they never bothered us. Nor did the honkers or the striders.

The vegetation changed, too, from one type of landscape to another. Out on some of the plains strange curly grasses grew and in some of the badlands areas distorted trees clung to the hillsides and huddled in the gullies. They looked more like palms than pines, although they were not palms. Their wood was incredibly tough and oily and when we passed through regions where they grew we collected as many of their fallen branches as the hobbies could carry to serve as wood for campfires.

And always there were the trees, the great monsters that towered miles into the sky. Now we knew, without any question, that they had been planted, that the land had been surveyed and they had been laid out in orchards, forming a geometric gridwork over the face of the land. We did not come closer than a mile or so to any one of them. The trail seemed to be engineered to avoid them. And while at times we saw them shooting out their seed pods, they never shot at us.

“It’s almost,” Sara said, “as if they’d learned a lesson. As if they knew what might happen to them if they fired at us.”

“Except it wouldn’t happen now,” I reminded her, blaming myself once again for having left the ship without going back to the control room to get the extra laser gun and the repair kit for it.

“They don’t know that, of course,” she said.

But I wasn’t quite as sure as she was.

At times, watching through glasses, we saw swarms of the little ratlike creatures scurry out of burrows some distance from the trees to collect the seeds from the thrown pods, carrying them to what undoubtedly were hidden pits to deposit them. We never tried to investigate the pits; they were too close to the trees. If the trees were willing to leave us alone, we were quite glad to reciprocate.

The trail kept on, at times growing faint, at other times broader and better marked, as if at some time in the past parts of it had been more heavily traveled than were other sections of it. But the travel in any event could not have been heavy. We did not meet a soul.

One day the trail was crossed by what at one time had been a paved road, with only a few of the paving blocks remaining. The few that did remain were either shattered or canted out of place, but standing at the point where it crossed the trail, almost at right angles, one could look for a long distance either way along the slash marked out by the road, running straight without a single curve.

We held a conference. The road somehow was attractive, in some ways seemed more important than the trail we had been following. In times past it would have linked points of some importance, while the trail went dawdling across the land in a most haphazard way. But the trail did bear some signs of ancient travel. The road bore none at all. It still existed only because enough time had not passed to erase it from the landscape. And the trail trended in a northerly direction and it was to the north that we understood we might find the centaurs. The road ran east and west. Another point. The trail undoubtedly was older than the road; it had an ancient look about it. In certain places where it was constricted by geographic features and thus not allowed to wander, it had been cut to a depth of three or four feet into the soil. The evidence was that it had been used for millennia, that it had been a route of travel in times beyond all telling.

With some reluctance, we made our decision, composed half of logic, half of hunch. We continued on the trail.

Someone had been here-how long ago? Someone who had built the city and laid out the road and planted the trees. But now the city stood silent and empty and the road had fallen into ruin. What did it mean, I wondered. A great deal of time and energy had been spent upon this planet. And then the spenders of this time and energy had left, taking steps before they left to insure that anyone who landed on the planet would have no chance to leave. Landing otherwhere than in the city, a ship undoubtedly would be safe and could take off again. But any ship approaching the planet would almost certainly land nowhere but in the city, lured in by the signals that reached far out in space.

Along the trail at intervals the beehive houses of stone still were encountered, squatting on their hilltops. An examination of them showed nothing. There was no debris, nothing left behind. They had not, apparently, been used at any time as permanent abodes; they were simply stopping places, to be used as shelter for a night or two. We camped out in the open; we never used them. For all their simplicity, they had a musty feel about them.

As we traveled, we shook down into shape. Tuck rode most of the time. He was too awkward, too gangling, to walk. Sara and I took turns at riding. Hoot continued to be file closer, bringing up the rear, hustling the hobbies along. There was no spoken agreement to this arrangement; we simply fell into a travel pattern. The hobbies remained sulky and after a time we did not try to talk with them. Tuck and I got along. We did not grow to like one another better; we just got along. He still carried his ridiculous doll, clutched against his chest. Day after day he drew away from us, retreating more deeply inside himself. After the evening meal he sat alone, not talking, not noticing.

We were covering a lot of ground, but we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. We were marching deeper and deeper into an unknown land which wasn’t hostile at the moment, but perhaps could turn so at a moment.

Late one afternoon we came to a badlands area and when we’d gone into it a ways realized that it was one of the really bad ones and somewhat more extensive than we’d first imagined. So when we reached a fairly level place we stopped despite there being another hour or two of light.

We got the packs off the hobbies and stacked the supplies in a pile and the hobbies went wandering off, as they often did, as if they took this chance to be shut away from us for at least a little time. But it was all right. Hoot always went off with them and he always brought them back. Through the days that we had marched he had served as a sheepdog for the pack of hobbies and they were safe with him.

We got a fire started and Sara began putting a meal together while Tuck and I went up a draw to bring in some firewood.

We were coming back, each of us with an armload of wood, when we heard the frightened screaming of the hobbies and the clangor of their rockers as they ran. We dropped the wood and set off swiftly for the camp and as we came in sight of it, the hobbies came boiling up out of a narrow gully. They were running fast and without pausing for an instant they overran the camp, scattering the blazing fire and the pots and pans Sara had set out, with Sara herself running for her life to get out of the way.

They didn’t even hesitate when they reached the camp, but turned to the right to head back down the trail. Behind them, came Hoot. He was running close against the ground, the only way he could run, and he was making speed as well. He was little more than a dark streak at the hobbies’ heels, but when he reached the camp he skidded to a halt and swung around broadside. Standing there, braced on his tiny feet, he blazed-as he had done back in the city when the hobbies had launched a sudden charge. Blue haze enveloped him and the world did a funny sort of jig and up on the trail the hobbies went flying, spinning in the air. But they got to their rockers once again and went plunging on and Hoot blazed once again, just as they reached the top of the hill that rose above the camp. This time they disappeared, flipped and hurled and blown over the hill by whatever Hoot was doing to them.

Cursing like a madman, I went tearing up the hill, but by the time I reached the top the hobbies were a long ways off and I saw there was no stopping them. They were high-tailing out of there, back toward the city.

I stood and watched them until they were almost out of sight, then went down the hill and back to camp.

The campfire still lay scattered, with sticks of charred and smoking wood lying all about, and a couple of cooking pans lay crushed by the hobbies’ rockers. Sara was kneeling on the ground above Hoot, who was lying on his side, a ghost of his former self. And that was no figure of speech-he was a ghost of his former self. He had a hazy, half-substantial look about him, as if he might have tried to go somewhere and had gotten stuck and was halfway between this world and another one.

I ran forward and went down on my knees beside him. I reached out my hands to pick him up and as I reached I wondered if there was anything that I could pick up. Strangely enough, there was-I would have sworn there wouldn’t be. I lifted him and he was very light; he couldn’t have weighed half his normal weight. I hugged him close against me.

He hooted at me feebly. “Mike, I try so hard.”

“What is the matter, Hoot?” I cried at him. “What is happening to you? What can we do for you?”

He didn’t answer and I looked at Sara and tears were streaming down her’ face. “Oh, Mike,” she said. “Oh, Mike.”

Tuck stood just a few feet behind her and for once he’d dropped the doll and his face was long and sad.

Hoot stirred feebly. “Life I need,” he said, his voice so feeble I could scarcely make it out. “Permission to take some life from you.”

And at those words, Tuck stepped quickly forward, and leaning, snatched Hoot away from me. He, straightened, holding Hoot tight against him as he had held the doll. His eyes blazed at me.

“Not you, captain,” he cried. “You need all the life you have. I have life to give.”

“Permission?” Hoot asked, an eerie, hooting whisper. “Yes, go ahead,” said Tuck. “Please will you go ahead.” Sara and I, crouching on the ground, watched in prayerful fascination. It took only a few minutes, perhaps only a few seconds, but the time stretched out into what seemed hours. Neither of us moved and I felt my muscles cramp from tension. Slowly Hoot lost the insubstantial look and became himself again-coming back out of that other world into which he had been bound.

And finally, stooping, Tuck set him on his feet, then himself collapsed into a heap.

I leaped to my feet and picked up Tuck. He hung limply in my arms.

“Quick,” I said to Sara. “Blankets.”

She placed blankets on the ground and I laid him on them and got him straightened out, then took another blanket and tucked it close about him. Lying on the ground a few feet away was the fallen doll. I picked it up and laid it on his chest. One of his hands moved slowly up to grasp and hold it there.

He opened his eyes and smiled up into my face. “Thanks, captain,” he said.