The Winds of Gath

Chapter Eleven

It came with a continuous rolling of thunder which tore at the ears and numbed the senses. The lightning was a web of electric fire across the sky, stabbing at the ground, searing wetly into the sea. The rain was a deluge, pounding the ground into mud, turning the air almost solid with its moisture.

The fires died. Stretched plastic echoed the drumbeat of the rain. Tourists cursed and huddled beneath the shelter of their rafts. Travelers fought to join them or scurried frantically to what shelter they could find. It was little. The wise stripped their shirts off and covered their heads with them so that they could breathe at least. The stupid drowned in the relentless downpour.

And still the air remained motionless. The winds had yet to come.

"I don't like it," said Megan. He sat, hunched in a corner of the church, his face pale from recent strain, "I've never known it this bad before."

"But it rains?"

"Sure." Megan moved so as to give Dumarest a little more room. The church was crowded with desperate travelers sheltering from the storm. They stood packed in an almost solid mass. The air was heavy with their heat and smell after their long confinement. "It rains and sometimes there's thunder, but not to this extent." He listened to the drumming of the rain. "This is something special."

He was shouting but Dumarest could hardly hear what he said. The thunder and rain seemed to fill the universe. Suddenly he could no longer stand the cramped confinement, the heat and the smell.

"I'm going outside." He tried to rise to his feet and Megan caught his arm.

"Wait it out, Earl. You're safe in here."

Safety was relative. In the church Dumarest was safe from the immediate danger of the rain but the rain would not last forever. Then would come fresh danger, perhaps from the Prince of Emmened, or Crowder, or the person who had tried to kill him on the journey. The violence of the storm triggered a violence within so that he burned with the need for action.

He jerked his arm free and tried to thrust his way toward the opening of the church. He failed; the press of men was too great. He dropped to his knees and probed the lower part of the wall. The plastic was thin, merging with the sea of mud outside. He dug and lifted and gasped as spattered rain lashed his face.

"Earl!"

"Wait here!"

Dumarest lifted the side wall, ignoring Megan's protest, flattening so that he could thrust head and shoulders outside. The rain slammed at his skull and forced it into the mud. He reached out and clawed at the ground, dragging the rest of his body from the tent. The side wall fell behind him and suddenly he was alone.

Alone in a peculiar world lit by the stroboscopic effect of vivid flashes of lightning, deafening with the roll of thunder, the drumming of rain.

He turned and felt water drive into his nostrils, his mouth, slam with bruising force against his closed eyelids, run wetly into his ears. He tried to breathe and choked as water reached his lungs. Coughing he turned to face the mud, stooping low as he ran forward in a long, loping crouch.

He paused to get his bearings, conscious of the proximity of the sea and the cliffs falling to the waves. In such a storm it would be easy to go over the edge. A lightning flash showed him his position. Ahead and to one side loomed the tents of the Matriarch, black in the fierce glare. He could see no guards but had expected none. They would be inside. Another flash and he could see the complex of the Prince of Emmened, equally black, equally lifeless. The rafts of the tourists rested, well away from the sea, a cluster of crowded travelers devoid of shelter, some alive, some dead, all inconspicuous in the mud.

He ran forward as darkness closed around.

It was hard work, harder still as he had to steal every breath, shielding his face and waiting as his gasping lungs reoxygenated his blood, retching as water reached where only air should go; waiting too as the vivid glare of lightning etched the plain with stark clarity, running only when it was safe to move unobserved.

The rain eased a little. The rolling thunder moved seaward; the lightning was no longer directly overhead.

Dumarest tripped and fell, slamming heavily into the mud, feeling the soft dirt splash into his eyes and mouth. He rolled, face upward, so that the punishing rain could wash him clean, rolling again in order to breathe. He looked at what had tripped him.

He looked thoughtfully at a boy, scarcely a man, the one who had traveled with Sime and the crone. He was quite dead.

Drowned, perhaps, caught in the storm and not knowing what to do in order to survive. He lay face-up, his face very pale beneath the patina of rain, his thin hands crossed on his stomach, his lips parted, his hair a dark smear on his forehead. Dumarest reached out and turned his head, waiting for a flash of lightning before turning it to the other side.

The sky crackled with a livid glare and he saw, quite clearly, the little red spot high on the cheek, just before the ear and below the temple.

A spot which could have been made by the thrust of a heavy needle.

The rain ceased and the thunder muttered into silence. The lightning blazed on the horizon in a lambent chiaroscuro. Far to the west the libration of the planet thrust a wall of cold air into the tropic heat of the sun. The thermodynamic balance began to change. Equally far to the east a cold bank of frigid air began to move, drawn by the vacuum of expansion. It speeded as it moved, rushing over the cold of the nightside toward the warmth of the sun. It swept across plains of ice and hummocks of frost and streamed down on the mountains. It hit and surrounded the obstruction, blowing up and over, forcing its way through cracks and crevasses, bathing the fretted and filigreed mass of stone and crystal with the thrust of its passage.

The air became murmurous with sound.

Ghost sound. The distant skirl of pipes, the crying wail of strings,the heartbeat of rattling drums, all mingled and faint, thin and unimpressive.

The wind blew stronger.

And the dead rose to talk again.

Dumarest rose from where he knelt beside the body.

Around him streamed a medley of voices, a cacophony of sound, a vibration which covered the audible range and extended far beyond. He heard his name and turned and saw nothing. He caught the echo of a laugh, the snarl of a curse, the thin tremolo of a baby's wail. He closed his eyes.

Immediately the sounds grew louder. A multi-toned murmur whispered past his ears and, buried within it, a voice scratched with boneless fingers at the doors of memory.

"It's your turn next, Earl, Make it doubles-I want to celebrate."

"Carson!"

"Don't be a fool, Earl. Why don't you settle down now that you've got the chance? Take my advice and do it before it's too late."

"Carson!" Dumarest opened his eyes, almost expecting to see the familiar shape of the man who had traveled with him to a dozen worlds. Carson who had gambled against the odds once too often and was now five years dead.

There was nothing, only the mountains, the wind, the thin wavering of the unmistakable voice. That and the cries of the others, the travelers and tourists, who had left their shelter to stand, entranced, exposed to the magic of the winds of Gath.

Again he closed his eyes-the illusion was better that way, more complete. Now the voices were clear and strong, ringing from the winds which blew about his head. Many voices, some of men who had tried to kill him, others of men he had killed. Moidor sneered his challenge, Benson murmured his envy; he heard the spiteful whine of a phygria, the hot snarl of a laser. The past unfolded and the dead became real:

The old captain who had taken pity on a scared and frightened boy.

"One thing, son. You must promise never to tell anyone of this. Never mention it or go into detail. If you do it will cost my life. Do you understand?"

The promise he had kept until now and then only broken in part. But a man should know how to find his home.

Other voices, harsh, impatient, some appealing. A dizzying blend of sound containing within itself all the voices he had ever known. And one voice, warm with sensuous passion, whispering with rising emotion, tearing at his heart with painful memory: "Darling… darling… darling.. ."

"No!"

He jerked open his eyes. The past was dead, she was dead, let it lie. But the temptation was strong. To hear her again, to thrill to her words of love, to recapture the joy of the past and warm his spirit in tender memory…

Savagely he shook his head. The voice was a lure, an illusion without flesh or real meaning, a ghost from the past born in his own head from memories impossible to eradicate. Now he could understand Megan's warning. How many had run to their death thinking that they ran to the arms of their lovers, family, friends?

Or ran from some imagined danger which tore at their sanity?

He gritted his teeth against the rising wind. Around him the plain was in turmoil. Men sat entranced, beating time to invisible orchestras, walking as if in a dream, standing with tears running down their faces or cursing or holding conversations with the empty air. They stood revealed in the flicker of the distant lightning, helpless in the grip of their illusions.

The wind blew stronger.

High on the mountain a young man checked his instruments and felt the rising force of the wind. He heard nothing, the muffs clamped to his ears deadening all sound, but he was curious. The instruments required little attention and it was doubtful if he would ever again visit Gath. And, if he should listen, just for a short while, who would ever know?

He lifted his muffs and listened and screamed and fell two hundred feet to his death.

On the plain the Prince of Emmened blanched as voices rang in his head, sharp, accusing, the words of men long dead, the sobs of women long forgotten. He cried out and his physician came running, an old man, long deaf, the electrodes of his mechanical ears glistening against the hairless dome of his skull.

"The voices!" screamed the prince. "The voices!"

The physician read his lips. He had turned off the power for his ears when the wind had first brought its pleasure and pain and he could guess at what troubled his master.

"Think of pleasant things," he suggested. "Of the sighs of women, the laughter of children, the song of the birds."

"Fool!" The prince snarled his anger but the man made sense, more sense than the wind which carried the tormenting voices. But he could not do it alone. "Bring drugs," he ordered. "Euphorics. Hurry!"

Drugged, dreamlike, drifting in illusion, the prince sprawled in his chair and thought of pleasant things. Of combats and diversions yet to come. Of the richness which life had to offer and the painful joy of complex jests-painful to the victims, of course, never to him. And he thought of the Lady Seena, the most pleasant thing of all.

He was not alone. Rigid in her chair, her room open to the wind, the Matriarch of Kund sat alone in a world of memories. She listened again to the deep, strong voice of a man and could imagine his touch, firm yet tender, the hands on her shoulders, her waist, the curve of her hips. Her lips pursed to his kiss, the blood running hot in her aged veins.

"Darling!" she whispered. "Oh, my darling!"

"My love," echoed the voice in her mind. "Gloria, my love. I am yours for all eternity. We are meant to be together-I cannot live without you. My darling, my love, my own!"

A man, dust for over eighty years, now talking and breathing at her side, his voice, his beloved voice, soft in her ears.

"I love you, my darling. I love you… love you… love you… "

Another voice, thin, high, childish.

"Mummy! Look, mummy. See what I have!"

A scrap of root shaped in the likeness of a man, a doll drawn from nature. Arms and legs and the rudiments of a face. With cosmetics she had drawn in the details, the eyes and lips and ears. With lace from her handkerchief she had fashioned a dress. The sun had been warm that day, and the air full of tenderness. Her heart ached with the memory of it.

And other voices, the thin, whispering echoes of ambition, the temptation of office and the knowledge that the coveted prize was hers-for a price.

"Mummy." whispered the voice, the thin, girlish voice. "When am I going to see you again?"

The tears ran unheeded down her withered cheeks.

Dyne crouched over his recorder, his head grotesque under the muffs which covered his ears, his eyes burning with the light of scientific dedication. Around him the wind moaned against the tents, the drumming of the plastic adding to the medley, reenforcing rather than blanketing the catholic noise.

On the machine the tapes wound soundlessly from their spools, recording every note of the entire spectrum of audible sound, recording even the sub- and ultrasonic vibrations beyond the range of normal hearing. It was a sensitive instrument. It would miss nothing but it would solve nothing. It lacked the catalyst of the brain which could transmute sound into imaginary image.

The cyber leaned back, pensive, wondering at the world of emotion of which he knew nothing. The secret of Gath was, to him, no secret. It was merely a combination of circumstances which had a cumulative effect: the mighty sounding board of the mountains which, beneath the thrust of the wind, responded in terms of living sound; sound which could trigger thought-associations so that the hearer would live in a world of temporary hallucination, sound which could be filtered by the brain to form actual words, music, songs and declamations.

Sound which contained within itself the sum total of every noise that had been made or could be made in the lifetime of the universe.

That was the unique attraction of Gath.

He shifted, a little restlessly, conscious of the sound without actually being able to hear it. Coldly his mind evaluated the incident. There was nothing mysterious about it. There were only so many cycles to the range of the human ear. There were only so many combinations of sound possible within that range. Given enough time, each of those combinations must be played.

He made a slight adjustment to the recorder.

Dumarest gritted his teeth and clamped his hands over his ears. It made little difference. The blast of the wind was not so easily beaten; the voices refused to be silenced.

He felt that he stood in the center of a shouting crowd, all yelling against the thunder of music, the accumulated roar of factories. He heard the hissing whine of rocket engines, the rolling crescendo of atomic destruction, the thudding blast of endless cannon. He heard the screams of burning men, the shrieks of ravaged women. The wail of tormented children made a threnody of pain laced with hymns, paeans, the shanties of drunken seamen. The creak of ropes blended with the sullen throb of engines.

"No!"

His shout was lost in the wind. The storm was too strong, the wind too powerful, human resistance too low. Lightning cast its garish light over the plain. He could see a musician beating time, his eyes glazed with madness. A tourist ran recklessly toward the sea. A traveler ripped at his clothes, his nails raking his flesh. Voices drummed within his skull.

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.. "

"E equals MC squared…."

"The Curfew tolls the knell of parting …"

"No, Harry! For God's sake…"

"Two drops and…"

A million voices in a thousand tongues merging with the natural sounds, the factory noises, the music and songs and sounds of peace and war so that they, like the mingled colors of the spectrum, formed a "white," a composite noise.

Dumarest groaned with the pain of his ears.

Rational thought was impossible. It was hard to concentrate: words formed themselves to follow the trend of thought; mental images flocked to dull logical sequence.

He stooped and grabbed handfuls of wet dirt. He lifted the mud and slammed it over his ears, piling it high, adding to the sticky stuff until the impact of the wind had fallen to a low murmur. The dead man watched him from where he lay.

Waiting for Dumarest to join him in the mud.

He turned barely in time, catching a glimpse of naked metal, the afterglow of a lightning flash on polished steel. He jerked sideways, his skin crawling to the fear of poison. A small shape hit him as he grabbed at the wrist. He missed and doubled as a foot drove into his groin. Half blinded with pain he backed and fell over the body of the dead man.

The glare of lightning showed him the figure of the crone, eyes wild, ears muffled, the heavy needle poised over his eyes.

He grabbed, rolling as the light died, managing to wrench the sliver of steel from her hand. The mud fell from his ears and his head ached to the windborne hammer of sound. He felt a lithe body and gripped it, hands searching for the throat. He missed, felt metal instead and ripped the muffs from her ears.

And lost her in the darkness.

He sprang to his feet as the next flash lighted the sky. He saw her running away from him, heading toward the cliffs and the sea below. He followed, slipping in the mud, retching from the pain in his groin. He saw her once more, a ragged figure silhouetted against the sky, then she vanished as the light died.

She was gone when the next flash came.

Slowly Dumarest walked back toward the mountains. He scooped up fresh mud to cover his ears, wondering how long the storm would last, how intense it would grow. The limit must be very close. Sheer sound, alone, could not kill but the accompanying ultrasonics could, if there were ultrasonics. From the pain in his ears he knew that the possibility was high.

He reached the dead man, passed him, and continued toward the tents of the Matriarch. He was close to the area, heading to where Sime had rested his coffin, when the storm reached its climax.

The wind fell, the lightning flared raggedly in the sky and nature seemed to hold its breath. Things took on a peculiar clarity in the electric illumination, somehow unreal caught as they were in the stroboscopic effect of the lightning.

Then, as if it had merely paused to gather strength, the wind returned in a savage gust which surpassed all that had gone before.

And, in the eerie flicker of the lightning, Dumarest saw the lid of Sime's coffin rise, tilting, falling aside from the rising figure below.