Special Deliverance

26

He stumbled south, following the trail that he and Jurgens had made in coming north. Some stretches of it already had been wiped out by the drifting sand, but in each instance he was able to pick it up a little farther on. He still heard the rumble back of him, the receding sound of Chaos. And what, he asked himself as he crept along the trail, had Chaos been? Not that it mattered now. All that mattered now was to get back to Mary. Night fell and the moon came out, a bloated globe swimming out of the east, and the first stars shone. Doggedly he kept on. It should be easier now than it had been earlier in the day, he told himself, because now he was traveling downhill. It did not, however, seem any easier.

He collapsed and lay upon the sand, unable to go on, unable to lift himself to his feet again. He rolled over on his back and fumbled for his canteen. While he fumbled for it, he fell into sudden sleep.

He woke in a blaze of sun, wondering for a moment where he was. He propped himself on an elbow to look about; there was nothing to be seen except the blinding sand, reflecting back the shimmer of the sun. He put up a fist and rubbed his eyes — remembering where he was and that he must go on.

He surged to his feet and shook himself. Standing unsteadily, for he still was only half awake, he hitched his canteen in front of him and drank of the tepid fluid. Then, recapping the canteen, he started walking, heading down the trace that earlier he himself had made. He clawed food, any kind of food, the first his searching fingers found, out of his pack, and munched it as he walked. There was nothing that could be allowed to stop him going south. His legs, stiffened by sleep, cried out against his going, but he drove them on and gradually they became good legs again. His throat cried out for water, but he didn’t drink, for the water in his canteen was low and he must conserve it. (Hours later he realized that a second canteen, filled with water, was tucked into his packsack.) The sand ahead of him rippled and swam in the harsh blaze of the sun. He had slept longer than he should have, losing valuable time, and he used this as a lash to drive himself on.

He thought of Jurgens at times, but not too often or too much. That again was something that he could do later on. He tried to concentrate on the thought of Mary, waiting for him at the singing tower. But at times even the thought of Mary slipped away and he plunged on into a vacuum, knowing only one thing, holding fast to one thing in his mind — that he must reach the singing tower.

He came to the end of the dunes and while the trail was now fainter, he still was able to follow it, for the ground still was sandy. The sun reached zenith and went down the west. With the going better — more level ground and fewer and smaller dunes — he tried to hurry, but was unable to move his legs the faster. The best that he could manage was a steady plodding. Which was not to be wondered at, he reasonably told himself. This was the third full day of tortuous travel. Still he blamed himself, raged at himself for not going faster.

The sun went down and to the east the stars blazed out and the sky lighted as the moon came up. Still he drove himself. If he kept going, if he only could keep going, he could be at the singing tower by dawn.

His body betrayed him. His legs gave out and finally he had to call a halt. He hauled himself into protection against the wind afforded by the lee of a small dune and unstrapped his pack. He found the extra canteen and had all the water that he needed, being careful not to drink too much. He found hard sausage and soft cheese and gulped it down, half starved.

He’d sit and rest awhile, he promised himself, but he would not go to sleep. In an hour or so he could go on again. He dozed and when he woke, the first light of dawn was dimming the eastern stars.

Cursing himself for sleeping, he staggered up, shouldered the pack and started south again. He had promised Mary he would not be gone longer than four days, and he would keep his promise.

Dunes lay ahead of him and the end of easy travel. On this stretch of land before he reached the dunes, he must cover as much ground as possible, for the dunes would slow him up.

Why was he so frantic? he asked himself. There was not this much need to hurry. Mary was all right. She was waiting for him and she was all right. These reassurances gave him no comfort; he did not slacken his pace.

Shortly after noon he came again to the dune where they had found the wrecked walking machine. The skull, with its gold tooth glinting, grinned idiotically at him. He did not linger.

He came to the dunes and attacked them like a man berserk. Only a few hours more, he told himself. He’d be at the tower before the sun had set, with Mary in his arms. An hour or so later he caught a glimpse of the tower as he topped one of the higher dunes, and the sight of it drove him even harder.

All the time that he had been making his way across the desert he had held in mind a rather hazy vision of Mary running toward him, calling out joyously to him, with her arms outstretched, as he came down the final length of ground. This did not happen. She did not come running to greet him. There was no evidence of her at all. No smoke trailed up from the campfire. There was no one, not even Sandra.

And then, as he came running down toward the camp, he saw Sandra. She lay huddled close against the base of the singing tower. She did not move. The wind fluttered a scarf that she wore about her neck and that was all.

Lansing came to a stumbling halt. A chill hand reached out from somewhere to touch his heart and a shiver of panic ran through his body.

“Mary!” he shouted. “Mary, I’m back! Where are you?”

Mary did not answer. Nothing answered.

Sandra would know, he told himself. Apparently she was asleep, but he would shake her awake and she would tell him.

He knelt beside her and shook her gently. There was something very wrong — she had no weight. He shook her again and the thrust of the shake turned her so that he could see her face. It was a wizened mummy face.

He jerked his hand from her shoulder and the face dropped back, no longer looking at him. Dead, he thought — as if she had been dead a thousand years! Shriveled inside her clothing, fluttering in the wind, a husk from which all life and substance had been sucked!

He stood again and wheeled about. He stumbled to the fire and held his hands above the gray ash. He felt no heat. He dug into the ashes and the fire was dead, there was no lingering coal at the bottom of the ash. A pack-sack lay beside the dead fire, only one packsack. Sandra’s more than likely. Mary’s pack was gone.

He let himself down to a sitting position and his mind was numb — numb to horror and grief, just numb.

Sandra dead and Mary gone and the fire — the fire, he thought, it would have taken hours for the fire to burn completely out. Mary had been gone for hours.

His brain lost some of its numbness and the terror came rushing in, but he fought it back.

There was no time to submit to terror or to panic. This was the time to sit quietly and think, to try to think it out, to pull all the pieces together and see what might have happened.

The camp was deserted. Jorgenson and Melissa were not here, but that meant nothing. They might be late in coming back. They all had agreed, when they left the camp, to return in four days, and the fourth day had not ended.

Sandra was dead, with the appearance of having been dead a long time, although that was not possible. She had been alive four days ago, less than four days ago. The tower, he told himself bitterly and with no logic, had sucked her dry, and fed upon her, consumed her until there was nothing left of her. Sucked her dry, perhaps, because she had willed that it should do so, willingly giving herself to it, a devotion paid to her perception of the beauty she’d found in it.

Mary was gone, but she had not fled. She had not run, screaming, into the wilderness. Her pack was gone. She had taken it and left. But why had she not left something to tell him where she’d gone? A note, perhaps, weighed down by a rock.

He rose to his feet and searched the area, finding nothing, then, to be certain, he searched it again and the second time found nothing.

She could have gone north, he thought, thinking to meet him and Jurgens on their way back. Or she could have gone west, hoping to find Jorgenson and Melissa, although that seemed unlikely, for she had not liked either one of them. Or perhaps she had taken the trail back to the second inn and was waiting there for him.

First things first, he told himself, surprised at how calmly he could think. First he’d go back to the beginning of the dunes and make a wide sweep to see if he could find her track. If she had gone north, she probably would have found their tracks and followed them, but if that had been the case, he’d have met her when he was coming back, for he’d backtracked all the way.

Still he went and made the sweep and found no tracks other than his own and Jurgens’s. He examined the tracks they had made carefully for evidence of a third person. There was no evidence. There were only their two tracks going north and his set of tracks on his return. No other person had passed that way.

Night was settling in when he returned to the camp. For a time he stood and thought, trying to reach some decision. At last he made one, and it was a hard one for him to make. But, trying to suppress his guilt at making it, he told himself it was the one thing he could do.

He was bushed. He had been four full days upon the trail with no rest and little sleep. He needed a chance to become whole again. He’d not be helping either Mary or himself by charging off again, half dead from sleep, his thinking dazed, his perceptions dulled. By morning Jorgenson and Melissa might have returned and could help him in his search. Although that, he told himself, was no great factor in his thinking; he thought no more of the two of them than Mary had. At best they were poor sticks.

He found wood and started a fire, boiled coffee, fried bacon, made some pancakes and opened a can of applesauce — the first square meal he had had for days.

The thought of Mary never left his mind, but he persisted in assuming that she was all right, that no matter where she might be she was safe. He tried to wipe the terror and the worry from his mind, but succeeded only partially.

He wondered what might have caused her to leave. Whatever the reason might have been, it must have been persuasive, for under almost any circumstance she would have waited his return. There must have been pressing reason for her going, and he tried to summon up in his mind some possibilities. But that was fruitless and sometimes terrifying and he did his best, once started, to quit thinking of it.

He wondered, too, about Sandra. Should he bury her, digging a hole and covering her and saying some awkward and futile words when it all was done? Somehow, for some reason that he could not clearly comprehend, it seemed not quite the thing to do. It seemed, the more he thought about it, that disturbing her in any way would be sacrilegious. Better, perhaps, to leave her as she was, a shriveled (and holy?) sacrifice at the base of the singing tower. He thought about it and his thinking made no sense at all, but in a crazy, convoluted way it seemed to have some logic in it. What would Sandra have wanted? he asked himself, and there was no answer. He had not known Sandra well enough to guess what she might have wanted, and that, he thought, was a pity. Perhaps he had not known any of them well enough, as well as he should have known them. Despite the many days he had spent with them, he had not known them well. Did it, he wondered, require a lifetime to know a person well?

Of the six of them, four were gone, only he and Mary left. Now Mary, too, was gone, but he’d find her, he told himself, he’d find her.

After he had eaten, he crawled into his sleeping bag and was almost asleep when he was jerked awake by the sobbing of the Wailer. The sobbing was not nearby; it came from some distance down the trail, but still, in the silence of the night, it was loud.

He sat and listened to it, remembering the night of that first day, going north with Jurgens, when he had thought he heard the crying and had asked the robot, who had said that he heard nothing.

When the wailing all was done, he lay down again, pulling the bag up around him. Before he went to sleep, the Sniffler came and prowled all about the campfire. He spoke softly to it and it did not answer him, although it kept on with its sniffling.

Before the sniffling ended, he had gone to sleep.